Fire sprinklers provide the best fire protection available—to both residential and commercial buildings. Here are a few reasons why you shouldn’t leave your building’s fire protection to smoke alarms and fire extinguishers alone.

They provide active fire protection. Fire alarms provide passive fire protection—they’ll tell you when there’s a fire, but getting yourself and your family out of the house safely is up to you. Fire extinguishers are also passive—they can put a fire out, but you need to operate them manually. Residential and commercial fire sprinklers are the only fire protection systems that go into action without any need to operate the system on your own—and they provide the protection that fire alarms don’t. Having a fire sprinkler system in your home is like having a firefighter stationed in every room, 24/7.

They stop fires before they cause damage. Fire sprinkler systems extinguish most fires automatically before they cause more than minimal damage. When fires occur in homes with residential fire sprinklers installed, fire-related property damage is reduced by approximately 90% compared with damage caused by fire to homes without fire sprinkler systems.

They activate before the fire brigade arrives. How long will it take the fire brigade to arrive at your home in case of a fire? If you’re lucky, they’ll arrive in minutes—but most of us aren’t that lucky. If you live in an urban area where traffic might interfere with the fire brigade’s ability to respond, or if you live in a rural or suburban area half an hour or more away from the fire station, you could find that your house is severely damaged by fire before they have a chance to arrive, hook up their hoses, and start fighting the blaze. It can take only a few minutes for a fire to burn out of control—but fire sprinkler systems respond fast enough to control most fires no matter where you live.

They provide better fire protection than smoke alarms or fire extinguishers. Fire alarms can tell you when to get out of the house, but they can’t protect you from fire. Fire extinguishers need to be operated manually—requiring you to stand in close proximity to a fire. Both methods of fire protection can malfunction; fire extinguishers need to be replaced on a semi-regular basis, and fire alarms need their batteries changed. Fire sprinklers stop the fire before it can threaten you and your family—and malfunctions are extremely rare.

Your family or business deserves the best fire protection money can buy. For approximately the same price as installing new carpets, you can have a fire sprinkler system installed that won’t run out of batteries, get stalled in traffic while responding to your call, or leave you to escape a dangerous house fire on your own. Fire sprinkler systems provide nearly fail-safe protection to most homes and businesses—and for many homeowners and business owners, the peace of mind fire sprinklers provide is worth any cost.