One weakness is that the glass vial is fragile. In some hotels you’ll see signs reminding guests not to hang clothes from the sprinkler head, as a clothes hanger could break the vial and activate the water flow.
If it were a problem, you'd be hearing about it from apartment dwellers, since sprinklers are required in many (if not most) cases:
https://firetechsprinkler.com/blog/when-are-sprinklers-requi...
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0194436920897553...
> Veiller, concerned with strategy, proposed that legislation to prevent multifamily housing use indirect methods because "zoning legislation will no doubt be fought strenuously and perhaps defeated." He outlined an approach designed to make apartment construction, even of three-unit dwellings, prohibitively expensive:
> ‘Do everything possible in our laws to encourage the construction of private dwellings and even two-family dwellings, because the two-family house is the next least objectionable type, and penalize so far as we can in our statute, the multiple dwelling of any kind.... If we require multiple dwellings to be fireproof, and thus increase the cost of construction; if we require stairs to be fireproofed, even where there are only three families; if we require fire escapes and a host of other things, all dealing with fire protection, we are on safe grounds, because that can be justified as a legitimate exercise of the police power.... In our laws let most of the fire provisions relate solely to multiple dwellings, and allow our private houses and two-family houses to be built with no fire protection whatever’ (NHA Proceedings 1913, 212).
Most common sprinkler type used in a residential setting is “wet pipe”: https://www.nfpa.org/news-blogs-and-articles/blogs/2021/03/2...
The sprinkler is “activated” if the ambient temperature around the sprinkler head is 40C, due to the little “wet pipe” in the sprinkler bursting. 40C is HOT. Basically - when your whole apartment is beginning to catch fire. It’s designed to save lives, not your things.
Newer (higher end) apartments will have the sprinkler itself hidden / recessed, this way the little wet pipe / vial can’t be accidentally damaged by force (when cleaning, painting, etc)
wet pipe burst temps are between 57c-75c .
So pretty much room temperature in central Europe in summer?
And actually i misspoke on the 40C! I mixed up that number with something else so that’s my bad. It actually activates around 60C-70C depending on the make/model.
Do you know what happens when you put water on an oil fire, which is pretty much what you're going to have in a kitchen?
When the water is coming out of the ceiling at 25 gpm, you get a lot of slightly oily water and no fire.
To answer your earlier question, the purpose of sprinklers in a house is to save my pets' lives if a fire starts while I'm away.
Have you ever lived in a place with sprinklers?
Do you actually think they go off when ever the highly sensitive smoke detectors detect you made your pizza extra crispy with the window closed.