Responding to a petition by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) proposed modernizing smoke alarm requirements for manufactured housing in an edition of the Federal Register. Found on page 31,778 of the May 18 edition, the proposal would adopt smoke alarm provisions from NFPA 501 (Manufactured Housing), which are based on NFPA 72, the National Fire Alarm Code(r).
The proposed rule would replace decades-old smoke detector requirements that can cause false alarming, which often leads users to disconnect or remove detectors. The new NFPA requirements, designed to alleviate false alarms, are based on research conducted by the Building and Fire Research Laboratories (BFRL) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Implementation of the new requirements, which affect one-third of all new single-family homes in the United States, is expected by the end of the year.
