Sprinkler systems required for new larger homes in Morgan County

Morgan County has enacted a new ordinance which requires new homes greater than 3,600 square feet to have automatic fire sprinklers in all livable space and evacuation routes. The new provision applies only to homes in what is known as the urban-wildland interface area, which is basically all of the unincorporated county.

“Morgan County has seen a rapid increase in new construction throughout the County, increasing the demands upon the County’s existing Morgan County Bureau of Fire Prevention Bureau (“MCBFP”) as well as decreasing the ability of its departments to rapidly and effectively respond to fires; and the Morgan County Commission has determined that changes to the Fire Code are necessary to better provide for the fire protection needs of the MCBFP in an effort to better protect the health, safety, and welfare of its residents,” the ordinance says.

“Automatic fire sprinkler systems have been proven to significantly reduce the likelihood of injury and death to occupants and firefighters as well as limit the likelihood fire damage to the structures and the spreading of fires to other structures and property,” it says.

At the Dec. 19 Morgan County Commission meeting where he presented the proposed change to them, Fire Chief Boyd Carrigan told the commissioners about a recent Mountain Green home fire which took 250,000 gallons of water and 67 manpower hours to extinguish.

“If you take that same home if it would have had sprinklers, it would have flowed 13 gallons a minute with … two 26-gallon heads so no more than 300 to 600 gallons of water would have either put the fire out or slowed it down long enough that we could have got there and easily put it out,” he said.

“We need to remember also that there's two threats to when fire erupts: the threat to the community when the fire moves from the vegetation to the neighboring homes. The second threat is structure fires.They threaten the community when there’s insufficient water supplies and fire moves from the  structure to the vegetation and into the neighborhoods,” he said.

Having adequate fire flow is a huge problem in much of Morgan County, he added. 

The 3,600-square-foot sprinkler threshold is a Utah Fire Code standard, Fire Warden Dave Vickers told the commissioners.

“When we’re talking about fire load, homes under 3,600, when they burn they’re not going to put out as much heat, fire, all that other mitigating things as a larger home,” he said.

Enacting this provision allows smaller subdivisions such as four-lot subdivisions to be able to provide fire suppression that is economically feasible, he said. Sprinklers currently average $1.50 to $3 a square foot, he added.

Smaller homes are exempted from this requirement unless the “Authority Having Jurisdiction determines there is a substantial public healthy or safety interest to require installation,” according to the ordinance.

Existing homes under 3,600 square feet that add an extension would be able to address fire suppression in other ways such as installing fire walls and a fire-rated door on the addition, Carrigan told the commissioners at their Feb. 20 meeting where the ordinance change was adopted. 

Under the new ordinance, unfinished basements are considered livable space.λ