Installing fire sprinklers in new home construction can add between $1.60 and $8 per square foot to the cost.
Keeping housing affordable is the main concern of Rep. Joyce Peppin (R-Rogers). She sponsors
HF460, which would prevent state building code, fire code or other subdivision codes from requiring installation of sprinklers. Approved 90-40 by the House March 31, it now awaits action by the Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Committee. Sen. Warren Limmer (R-Maple Grove) is the Senate sponsor.
Affordability is also the concern of Rep. Morrie Lanning (R-Moorhead) who said that requiring sprinklers could price border communities out of new housing, when compared with states such as North Dakota and South Dakota.
Rep. Kerry Gauthier (DFL-Duluth) said the bill is opposed “by just about every fire department in the state,” the state fire marshal and the Department of Labor and Industry, and that sprinklers are known to save lives, property and the environment.
“Clearly this bill is for the benefit of contractors and not the benefit of public safety,” he said.
Peppin said the National Fire Protection Association has calculated there is a 99.45 percent chance of surviving a house fire if a hard-wired smoke alarm with a back-up battery is installed, as is now required. She also said the bill does not prohibit anyone from installing a sprinkler in their home.
The issue would be better decided by experts through the rulemaking process, not House members, said Rep. Tim Mahoney (DFL-St. Paul).
“The resort community (is) very fearful that in the rulemaking process they will be thrown under the bus on this issue,” said Rep. David Dill (DFL-Crane Lake), noting that he’d received “dozens and dozens” of calls from mom-and-pop resort and rental cabin owners about the issue.
Dill said the rocky landscape in his district makes drilling and accessing good water flow difficult for them.