What you're watching is a typical home fire. Everything is identical in these two rooms, except for one very important difference. The room on the left is protected with a fire sprinkler system. The fire started after a cigarette dropped onto the cushion. It grows quickly, generating heat and producing poisonous smoke, which spread throughout the house. The intense heat is what causes the sprinkler to work. Most home fire sprinklers turn on when the temperature from the fire reaches 135 to 165 degrees Fahrenheit. Only heat can cause the sprinkler to turn on, not smoke. As you can see, the room without sprinklers continues to burn, while the fire on the sprinklered side is quickly brought under control. Fire sprinklers are like having a fire fighter in your home 24 hours a day. Sprinklers work automatically to control a fire, even if you're not there. If you are home, fire sprinklers give you and your family extra time to escape. That saves lives. Sprinklers often put out a fire before the fire department can get there. In some cases, it can take a fire department ten minutes or more to arrive, from the time the fire starts. Without fire sprinklers, a fire grows and spreads to the point of flashover. That's when everything in the room bursts into flames. A home fire can become deadly in less than three minutes. By the time the fire department arrives, a fire will likely have reached flashover, and that spreads the poisonous smoke and heat even faster. If the family hasn't already escaped, they would not be able to survive in these conditions. Fire hoses spray up to 250 gallons of water per minute. The damage from the fire, smoke, heat and the fire hoses can be devastating. There is nothing else like a fire sprinkler system. This wonderful technology saves lives. And, because it works so quickly to control the fire while it's small, the sprinkler limits heat, smoke and water damage to a single area. That protects the people who mean the most to you, as well as your home and valuables.
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