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Home builders and fire safety officials have been butting heads over a potential mandate for residential fire sprinkler systems, and the debate was being brought to Lansing today.

The state Legislature is considering mandating that all new single-family and two-family homes have a fire sprinkler system. Supporters and naysayers were gathering today to argue their side before the state Building and Code Committee in Lansing, which will make a recommendation on the mandate in the coming months.

The International Code Council, which Michigan and 45 other states use as a basis to set construction codes, adopted a sprinkler mandate last year. Michigan, in its regular three-year review of the code, can adopt it all or in part, cutting unwanted sections.

Proponents believe sprinklers save lives. Those opposed say mandated sprinklers will increase housing prices and handicap an already-struggling building industry.

The sprinklers are not essential, according to Todd Hamstra, a member of Muskegon’s Shoreline Builders Association board of directors. In homes with functioning wired smoke detectors, people safely escape the fire more than 99 percent of the time, he said.

“We would be the first ones to jump on the bandwagon if it were a real safety issue,” Hamstra said.

Hamstra, a director of the Michigan Association of Homebuilders who planned to attend the forum in Lansing today, believes mandated sprinklers would drive up insurance and housing prices.

Price projections for installing sprinklers vary and depend on the system used and whether the home uses a well for its water. Some believe it will make up approximately 1.5 percent of the home’s total cost. Hamstra puts it at $6 per square foot or higher.

“Lower income owners might not be able to pay,” Hamstra said. The extra cost for sprinklers “may be the amount that kicks them off the edge,” he said.

Muskegon Fire Marshal Major Metcalf said more research needs to be done to determine the true cost of fire sprinkler installation.

“I don’t believe it’s as expensive as homebuilders believe it is,” Metcalf said.

Hamstra said water damage from sprinklers would cause higher insurance rates, but Metcalf does not believe they would increase. He said there is a common misconception that sprinklers cause excess water damage.

Each sprinkler head is individually activated by heat, and fire officials say they are not likely to go off for minor issues like burned toast.

Metcalf said fire sprinklers can help curb property damage, citing an apartment fire at 1249 Peck this month that ended in a total loss of the building.

Metcalf and Norton Shores Fire Marshal Norm Hosko, president of the Michigan Fire Inspectors Society, both planned to attend today’s Lansing forum. Hosko said the 3,000 to 4,000 Americans that die in house fires each year are mostly people who struggle to exit the home quickly.

“It’s the 5- and 6-year-olds, the 75- and 80-year-olds that can’t get down the steps and get out the door,” Hosko said. “A sprinkler system may not put the fire out, but it buys time…to get out of the home.”

E-mail Jeff Engel at jrengel@muskegonchronicle.com

The Washington offices of the NFL Players Association were damaged by a fire and the building’s sprinklers early this morning, a union official said.

The fire started around 5 a.m. in the office of DeMaurice F. Smith, the union’s executive director. Most of the damage that resulted was water damage done by the office’s sprinkler system, said George Atallah, the union’s assistant executive director of external affairs.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation, although it’s possible that a candle in Smith’s office was to blame, and there was no immediate estimate about the cost of the damage. The offices, located on 20th St. NW, were not occupied at the time and there were no injuries.

Smith was returning to the D.C. area on a red-eye flight from San Francisco, where he was meeting with players as part of his tour of all NFL teams, at the time of the fire. He had not been in his office since the middle of last week.

Atallah said the union remains prepared to open labor negotiations with the NFL’s team owners Wednesday as scheduled.

“There’s no damage that we know of to anything essential to our business operations,” Atallah said.

The calls have all been similar pranks: A frantic man urges hotel desk workers or guests to set off a fire sprinkler, sound an alarm or bust windows. It’s always the same: Do it now!

And, authorities said Thursday, they did. Eight cases have been reported in four states in recent days, and authorities say felony charges could be filed against whoever is making the calls.

In Alabama, a Marine roused from his sleep got “knocked silly” by a blast of water after being persuaded to set off the sprinkler in his room; there was no fire.

A motel in Arkansas sustained $50,000 in damage when a worker fell for a similar ruse.

A man was even convinced to drive his truck through a door of a hotel lobby in Nebraska, supposedly to turn off a fire alarm. And in California, a duped worker activated a sprinkler at the front desk, dousing computers, phones and other electrical equipment.

“It’s happening all over,” said Fire Marshal Ed Paulk of Alabama, where four hotels have been targeted by the calls since last week, resulting in thousands of dollars in damage. “We’re actively trying to track this and find out who is doing this.”

The general manager of a Comfort Suites in Daphne near the Alabama coast, Rupesh Desai, said a prank call about a fire alarm resulted in $10,000 in water damage last Friday.

Around the same time, he said, a caller convinced guests to bust windows at a sister hotel in Saraland, about 25 miles away, because of a natural gas leak that didn’t exist.

“In my hotel experience I’ve never heard of anything like this,” Desai said.

Trying to prevent more people from being fooled, trade groups are telling member companies and hotels to remind workers about basic emergency procedures like calling managers or security companies before doing anything drastic like setting off fire suppression sprinklers.

“No employees should be doing things like this without checking with someone,” said Namara Mercer, executive director of the San Diego County Hotel-Motel Association in San Diego, Calif.

Paulk said investigators suspect more than one person is behind the calls, and some could be inspired by Internet sites about phone pranks.

In York, Neb., Police Chief Don Klug said a man with a deep voice phoned a Hampton Inn around midnight on May 27 and scared a desk worker into pulling a fire alarm. During the confusion, the caller then convinced the worker the only way to silence the noise was to break lobby windows.

“A trucker was standing there, and he offered to help and drove his truck through the front door,” said Klug. The damage was estimated at $300, he said.

Desai, the Alabama hotel manager, said seven rooms were flooded when a caller got the sleeping Marine to set off the sprinkler in his room.

“He was knocked silly by the force of the water,” said Desai. “He was not a dummy, he just woke up in the middle of the night not realizing what was going on.”

Six other guests also got the calls but did nothing, he said.

A couple hours later in San Luis Obispo, Calif., a worker caused major damage by following a caller’s instructions to activate a sprinkler at the front desk of a Comfort Inn and Suites.

And in Conway, Ark., a caller convinced a worker at a Holiday Inn Express to set off an audible fire alarm and, with help from a guest, broke windows in an attempt to turn it off. She also was duped into turning on a sprinkler, flooding the lobby and causing major damage; about 150 guests were in the parking lot when police arrived.

A Holiday Inn Express in Little Rock, Ark., got a similar call around the same time, a police report said, but no one fell for the prank there.

The Alabama fire marshall said whoever’s making the calls could face jail time.

“It’s gotten to be the latest fad, but at some point someone is going to be caught,” he said.

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Simply Celebrations, a party-supply store on historic Main Street, has something to celebrate.

A fire Monday afternoon was quickly extinguished by a newly installed sprinkler system.

The system was required by an ordinance approved by the City Council in November to protect historic buildings and had been installed about six months ago.

“This is a tailor-made case with why you need fire sprinklers, especially on historic Main Street,” City Manager Bruno Rumbelow said.

At 2:16 p.m., firefighters received a call from The Magic Pen and Party about water leaking into the store from Simply Celebrations next door, officials said.

Firefighters forced their way into the closed store, in the 400 block of South Main Street. Division Fire Chief Mark Ashmead estimated water damage at about $5,000. But, he said, if not for the sprinkler system, the fire could have easily spread to the two adjacent stores and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage.

“Given that no one was here and the flammable contents of the store, we could

Ontario should mandate sprinkler systems for all new homes, a local fire prevention officer said in response to new provincial rules requiring the devices in high-rises.

Greg Nicol said the government should tweak the Ontario Building Code even more by forcing contractors of new houses no matter the size to install sprinkler systems.

“It didn’t go far enough, it needs to go further,” said the Owen Sound fire department member. “There is significant benefits to installing them in homes.”

But an official with the Ontario Home Builders’ Association said the decision to install sprinkler systems should be up to the new home’s owner, not the government.

The province announced building code changes Tuesday which require all new condominiums and apartments taller than three storeys to be outfitted with sprinkler systems as of spring 2010. Sprinklers are now only required in facilities like nursing homes, jails and hospitals.

The changes bring Ontario in line with other jurisdictions in Canada and the United States.

Nicol said the new rules will have little impact on construction projects in Owen Sound.

A bill that could more directly impact Owen Sound builds passed second reading in the Ontario legislature three weeks ago. The Municipal Residential Sprinkler Act would give municipalities the power to pass bylaws requiring fire sprinklers in all new residential buildings. It still requires a third reading.

Brian Green, Owen Sound’s chief building official, said if the bill becomes law he will recommend city council make sprinkler systems mandatory in all new homes. Existing houses would not be affected.

Green, a member of a group advocating for sprinklers in all new homes, said the government announcement is a “step in the right direction.”

Sprinkler systems use less than a tenth of the water fire departments spray, he said, “so you have less property damage and less water and no loss of life, so it’s bonuses all around.”