Fire Laws and Composite Materials

In Kansas, they are trying to pass a law that requires the installation of fire sprinklers in small residential complexes. This would add additional and unwanted costs to builders. According to this article:

"Ron Ewing of the Firefighters Association said the trend is to require sprinklers in new construction because of increased use of lightweight and composite materials.

Older wood-built homes could burn for about 20 minutes before they began to collapse. With new homes, that "burn time" shortens to five minutes because of the different materials used, he said."

Now what he means by "composite materials" is probably different then what we commonly think of composite materials, i.e. FRP.

Photo Credit: dvs via flicker

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