HeyBub wrote:
"State and local officials are now wrestling over whether to adopt building
codes that would require sprinklers in every new home and townhome starting
in 2011 amid intense lobbying from both sides."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090918/...ome_sprinklers


Sounds like my former town in Illinois.
I have seen sprinklers by the furnace
and water heaters in some houses. Maybe
it was only attached townhouses,
but I really don't remember. When we
were building the church in the mid 80s,
the town wanted the entire building
sprinkled. The builder/architect didn't
want
sprinklers and sited a loophole in the
code that said the building could be
divided into various parts separated by
firewalls. I think the architect just
didn't know how to put in the sprinklers
and properly hide all the plumbing.
There were only 2 sprinklers in the
boiler room. Otherwise the building was
separated into 5 fire zones. The were
fire detectors connected to the fire
department in each zone. BTW, he also
sited statistics at the time where
there were almost no church fires on
record and the ones sited were always
when the building was not occupied.
Since then I've seen many church fires
on the news, mostly in the middle of the
night, though. I think the sprinklers
would have been an improvement over the
system that was installed. But
this was a commercial building. Homes
are another thing.