The Cost of Not Maintaining Your Domestic Fire Sprinkler System: Compliance, Claims and Safety Explained

Losses from failing to maintain your domestic fire sprinkler systems can be surprisingly high. Average property losses from fires can range into six figures for each incident, underlining the importance of servicing these systems regularly. 

Domestic fire sprinklers are essentially systems installed in your home that only activate when external temperatures reach about 57°C to 77°C. When this happens, they discharge the water contained in the system, usually from a tank, via pipes under the force of gravity. 

Of course, the costs of failing to maintain these systems are not just financial. Getting it wrong could also lead to legal and insurance trouble, especially if you agreed to maintain a system but then allowed it to deteriorate to the point where it couldn't function. 

What's more, when you ignore maintenance, it isn't just lazy; it's expensive and dangerous, often coming back to bite you. 

Compliance: What Happens When You Ignore The Regulations?

Domestic fire sprinkler systems in the UK must meet BS9251:2021, the British Standard for flats and regular homes. These rules say that systems must discharge at least 60 litres per minute for a minimum of 10 minutes, and that they must offer around 130 square metres per head (meaning anyone in the household). 

Unfortunately, many fire sprinkler systems do not meet the standards outlined in the regulations. When this happens, authorities may impose significant penalties and fines. For example, the Fire and Rescue Service can issue a £30,000 penalty notice, plus up to £18,000 in additional costs, in situations where premises have been negligent. 

In some cases, landlords have had to pay fines of up to £66,000 for safety lapses involving fire sprinkler systems because of violations of the Fire Safety Order 2005. 

New rules like BS 9991:2024 highlight that neglecting fire sprinkler systems could actually disrupt planning for building approval. However, most faults are actually quite simple to resolve and involve oversights, such as simply leaving a system in the turned-off position. 

Therefore, maintenance requirements are often minimal. 

Claims: How Do Insurers React? 

Failing to maintain a fire sprinkler system on a domestic property also leads to insurance issues. Usually, policies will reduce premiums by 5-10% for sprinkler installation. However, this benefit disappears if fire systems are clogged or lack sufficient pressure.

If insurers discover that these are issues with existing systems after a claim, they will often deny the payout or push back against the figure you asked for. This can leave you with thousands of pounds of losses over time. 

Non-maintained systems aren't just a liability in the event of fires. They also create issues when they are discharged because of faulty systems. Flooding damage from sprinklers that activate without the presence of fire or heat often results in tens of thousands of pounds worth of damage. Lapsed maintenance therefore, can also affect insurance claims. Insurers are less likely to pay out if they believe upkeep has been inadequate. 

Insurers may also look for other issues like fire alarms that don't work or failing to inform them of a known system fault. When this occurs, the cost of fixing the damage can be significantly higher than if the insurer covered the majority of the claim.

Inspectors will often want to see the maintenance log of domestic sprinkler systems that have been activated as a result of a fire. If these logs are incomplete, insufficient, or indicate prior problems haven't been resolved, payouts become less likely. 

Safety: The Real Cost Of Non-Maintained Fire Suppression Systems

Ultimately, the real cost of failing to maintain a domestic fire sprinkler system is the safety risk. According to data from a South Wales report on more than 2,000 UK fire incidents, sprinklers reduce the risk of injury by a half when they activate and are up to 99% effective in extinguishing fires before they spread. Therefore, fires in buildings that lack this capacity are much more likely to result in harm. 

Failure to maintain domestic sprinkler systems can take multiple forms. Many simply stop working because of corroded pipes. Water remains stagnant inside the metal, leading to damage that eventually prevents additional water from flowing freely when a fire starts. 

Obstructions can also form, and shut-off valves can be accidentally left in place, preventing sprinklers from reacting when a fire starts. 

In around 1 in 20 cases, sprinklers don't work at all. When this happens, the risk of injury and fatality increases dramatically, especially among elderly victims. 

Data from the UK suggests that the number of people who died in sprinkled dwellings was only 5 in the period between 2013 and 2018, and all of those cases had special circumstances. Meanwhile, annual home fires in the UK are around 192,000 per year with casualties running at double the rate of sprinklered homes. 

When sprinklers activate successfully, they not only reduce the spread of fire to within a 30 square meter radius of where it began, but they also reduce smoke production. When the smoke concentration reduces, it negates some of the risk of smoke inhalation, one of the leading causes of deaths in fires in British homes. 

Ensure you are protecting your property

In summary, ignoring upkeep of sprinkler systems in domestic properties can cost owners up to £66,000 and lead to denied claims, which cost additional money, tens of thousands of pounds more. 

This financial burden is extreme compared to the very low cost of performing a few safety checks of sprinkler systems, perhaps costing between £75 and £300 a year. 

Therefore, the conclusion is to always get a professional to inspect your sprinkler system on a domestic property. 

They can perform DIY spot checks for things like corroded pipes and ensure systems are switched on and ready to react whenever temperatures rise above the critical threshold. 

Ultimately, getting a service like this is very affordable compared to the costs of ignoring maintenance.