HUD accepts sprinklers as alternate construction method
As part of the Operation Life Safety (OLS)/U.S. Fire Administration (USFA) initiative on residential sprinklers in manufactured homes (which began in early 1997), OLS Director Pat Coughlin and USFA representative Larry Maruskin visited two manufactured home plants in California in May 1997. After the meeting, Coughlin reviewed the HUD standard and wrote to both home builders, suggesting ways they could use sprinklers as alternate methods to some of the HUD requirements. One manufacturer later requested a variance on exit distance if sprinklers were installed. HUD approved the variance in October 1997.
In December 1997, representatives from OLS, USFA, HUD, and the manufactured housing industry met to discuss issues surrounding the use of residential sprinklers in manufactured homes. As a result, a proposal to add references to residential sprinklers in the HUD standard for manufactured homes will be considered when the entire HUD document is opened for revision in 1998. The proposal is based on a regulation that the California state fire marshal has recommended for homes delivered to California jurisdictions.
The proposed addition would not unilaterally require sprinklers in all new manufactured homes but would remove a major stumbling block to local jurisdictions that want to require sprinklers in one- and two-family homes. All manufactured home builders in the United States are required to use the HUD standard, and adding standardized language for installing residential sprinklers in manufactured homes when a local jurisdiction requires them will remove any doubt about whether that state and local jurisdictions can require sprinklers, explains OLS.
