Lou....Residential sprinkler systems are listed as a required system in the 2009 IRC. Whether or not your locale chooses to adopt that code in it's entirety or not or when, I can't say, nor do I care, but it's all covered there for starters.
In actuality, while your state allows the choice of installing them or not as an additonal optional system, your own AHJ's and politicians effectively voted against the installation of sprinkler systems in residential applications (SB1410 for your reference, look it up and read in it's entirety). In actuality, that further restricts the building officials from telling a HO that a system would be required for any reason (hazards, building size/type, lack of secondary egress).....not too worried about either the property or loss of life down there, but more about personal freedoms and liberty, contrary to how you feel or posted.
Sprinkler codes for residential do exist in your locale even though you are unaware. Residential sprinkler is covered under NFPA 13D, NFPA 25 and NFPA 72. It might not be a required system for residential in your area, but if you choose to install it, it must be up as minimum to what is prescribed within those documents. Ignorance is not something that can be used as an excuse. Clearly the installation is prescribed within those documents.
An analogy with sprinkler (residential or retrofit, your decision) for you to ponder as a parallel to this discussion....I decide I want to put sprinklers in my new build or retrofit in my new(ish) house. I decide I want to use regular schedule PVC fittings (or ABS, devil's advocate), and pipes and tie into the closest cold water piping installed within code for my feed, after all water is water and pipe is pipe (and both are listed for potable water, further discounting PEX as an installation method since that would require special tools, right?) I install a flow and pressure switch as needed....what's wrong with the installation, since if a sprinkler goes off, I'll get water and it'll work just like a sprinkler system should....I don't need to take any further design criteria into consideration?
You can cry foul, the "my house, I can do as I wish" argument, hum the battle hymn of the republic and claim it's your god given right to do such within your house, but just because you can wear a gasoline soaked pair of scrubs while twirling sparklers and holding an M-80 in your teeth doesn't mean it's a good idea, even if your locals allow it.
More power to you and your CS not dispatching on fire alarm without verification....they must have a good lawyer, insurance or both. While it may be allowed, do you really see this as a positive? In the same vein of your "it saves property" speech, if little Timmy is playing with matches in the basement and starts a smoldering fire and they call and he picks up and says everything is fine, but the local alarm doesn't change...smoke detector has no sounder, whatever variables you want to put in the hypothetical, and they never dispatch because a party picked up the phone and said all is fine and dandy, Timmy goes outside to ride his bike and that's where the call ends? An analog fire zone latched in alarm is not going to transmit multiple signals, so how is anyone going to know there is an active alarm? Sure, siren, got it, that should be going off....but who pays attention to a local interior sounder if they're not listening to it or for it? Oh...then it's the outside sounder (which wasn't put in because of ordinances, asthetics, the neighbors, whatever hypothetical you want to apply). So now we're at the same as an unmonitored local system.
Call verification on fire, duress or hold up alarms are not an industry standard by any stretch of the imagination. ECV is also an entirely different animal and topic. AR get around all the liabilities by stating all permitting and verification of requirements for any municipalities are your responsibility. I have yet to see a municipality or AHJ that will allow a call-first before dispatching on any fire signal if they know such a policy exists. Read Article 6 and 8 of AR's contract....unless they've modified it since the last time I read it/downloaded a copy.
As a FYI, AR is not the monitoring company, they are a reseller of services from their vendor, albeit they now reside under the same roof and have done some clever hiding of their past on the net. Not a flame, but merely being informative for those, such as yourself, that might not be familiar with the industry and history over the last 20+ years.
@ Work.
Once you connect any portion of any other system to a system designed to monitor and supervise a fire alarm it becomes part of the FACP or system. It may not be thought of as such, but even the simple and most basic alarm systems out there, as long as they have the ability to connect to a fire component and that ZT exists as a program option within, they are considered a FACP and are governed as such. The extent of the listing (residential, commercial, special hazard, releasing, what have you) is noted on the schematic and any corresponding documentation that comes with it, which will always have the UL/FM listing and extent written in it.
There is also very large item that is coming across in this cycle of NFPA regarding testing and operation, since the items connected at the end of modules for items like smoke control, recall, and shutdown need to be verified for actual operation at the connected system, not simply that the module functioned, as they are considered a part of the system as well.....really it means that the officials are now spelling out exactly where the system begins and ends, not terminating at a wire connection to a module, point, what have you, but to the last component that is connected to the system...with the key word really being system.
