and a convenient location, everything about Maitland Green I, a
110,959-square-foot office building completed in 1986, is first
class. That’s why when it came time to replace the building’s
original fire-protection system, second-best would be an
unacceptable option.
Of course, while choosing a new system would
ultimately be in the hands of building management, the decision
to actually replace the system was made for them. It was, in
fact, mandated by the fire marshall following a site inspection,
during which he concluded that the 14-yearold, conventional-type
fire system — which had no way to discern the exact location of
a fire event — had outserved its usefulness and required
immediate updating to a more functional alternative.
The project itself would not be overly complex,
as it simply involved switching out the existing fire panel for
a newer one; all ancillary devices would ultimately remain the
same. Still, unless it was done soon – and done correctly –
Maitland Green’s fire protection capabilities would fall far
short of the functionality one would expect in
such
premier office space.
Karen Padgett, the property manager at the time,
accepted bids from several reputable companies to specify a new
system and carry out the installation. In doing so, she made it
clear that, besides seeking a quality product, she was
particularly interested in one specific system feature.
“I wanted a non-proprietary system – that was a
critical consideration,” said Padgett, who now works in a
similar capacity for Stiles Property Management, the company
that purchased Maitland Green in late 2006. “Having a
non-proprietary system meant that we wouldn’t be restricted in
terms of who we decided to use for service, monitoring, or
upgrades.”
The importance of providing just the right panel
could not be overstated; Padgett put a premium not only on the
non-proprietary aspect but on a system that was cost-efficient
and could be installed relatively quickly in order to minimize
tenant disruption as well as system downtime.
Padgett chose Wayne Automatic Fire Sprinklers,
Inc., a fire protection company headquartered in Orlando, FL, to
upgrade the alarm system to current standards.
Wayne’s credentials were impeccable: the company
offers fire protection systems for warehouses, offices,
high-rises, hotels, condos, apartment buildings, timeshares and
townhouses.
And although the company, founded in 1978, began
dealing primarily in fire sprinklers – it is currently the
largest fire sprinkler contractor in Florida – it also operated
a highly successful alarm department that had been established
some 15 years ago. What’s more, Wayne had a distinct advantage
over its fellow bidders, having worked with the current
management company on both sprinkler and alarm projects.
Ultimately, Wayne recommended an Addressable
Fire Alarm Control Panel from Silent Knight, part of the
Honeywell Life Safety group and a provider of industry- wide
compatible fire alarm solutions for small and mid-size
institutions as well as commercial sites.
“Certainly, the non-proprietary profile of the
system was attractive to our client,” said Danny Harrod, alarm
operations manager for Wayne Automatic and a 23-year veteran of
the fire-protection industry. “We’re finding in this area that a
lot of building managers and property owners have had disastrous
experiences with alarm companies putting in proprietary
equipment, then essentially holding the customer hostage when it
comes to service, inspections, and monitoring.”
“Silent Knight addressable panels also work well
in retrofit situations because they can make use of standard,
existing wiring — no shielded or twisted pair wiring is
required,” he added. “Since wiring represents a substantial
portion of the cost of an alarm system, the elimination of new
wiring offered the customer significant savings.”
“We’ve worked with Silent Knight since the
inception of our alarm department,” he said. “In fact, we’ve
used their products almost exclusively and became an Engineered
Systems Distributor for the company about four years ago. We
will work with other manufacturers’ products but only if the
customer specifically requests it.”
Silent Knight equipment also has a
“meteorological” advantage. “Florida is the lightning capital of
the world, and it
wreaks
havoc with other fire panels,” Harrod explained. “We service a
large number of panels besides Silent Knight, and one time we
decided to prove this to ourselves.
Interestingly, we found that although about
80-90 percent of all the panels we service are Silent Knight,
80-90 percent of all the lightning damage we saw occurred on the
non-Silent Knight panels.”
Besides the non-proprietary properties, the
Model 5820XL is the first fire alarm system to combine
addressable technology – providing immediate, pinpoint accuracy
for any condition — with built-in digital communication and
distributed intelligent power. Its modular design features an
easy-to-use interface that simplifies virtually all procedures.
The system uses data from the sensors installed on the signaling
line circuits (SLC) to set sensitivity levels for each of the
zones in the system.
In addition, it uses the same data to perform
drift compensation and sensitivity checks on each of the sensors
in the system.
The Model 5820XL contains a warning detector to
alert you when dirt and dust particles are forming, thus
reducing the incidence of nuisance alarms. It features a
built-in dual line fire communicator that allows for reporting
of all system activity to a remote monitoring location. The
control panel has one built-in Signalling Line Circuit (SLC)
which supports 127 devices; three additional loops can be added
using SLC expanders to increase overall capacity to 508 devices.
The UL-listed digital communicator, which
enables remote reporting of system activity and system
programming, can seize two telephone lines to report alarms and
troubles to a monitoring facility.
The built-in annunciator with 80-character LCD
display and large easy to-use tactile touchpad can be used for
system operation, programming and maintenance, and a built-in
RS-232 interface is available for printing and programming using
a PC.
The panel, located on the building’s first floor
near one of the rear entrances, was installed in October 2006 in
a little over two weeks (“Being able to use the existing wiring
probably sliced about four weeks off the job,” said Harrod). The
new panel was mounted directly beside
the
older panel, with each existing zone connected incrementally to
the new panel with an interfacing addressable module.
By performing the installation in this fashion,
the building was not left at any time without fire protection.
The only thing left was to ensure that all
existing auxiliary devices were functioning properly through the
new panel, including all the smoke detectors, one located right
above the panel and the rest outside the elevator lobbies to
control elevator recall (because Maitland Green was a fully
sprinklered building, smoke detection was not required in the
tenant spaces or common areas).
Pull stations (located at all exits on every
floor), duct detectors, relays, strobes and the existing power
supplies were synchronized as well. Because the vast majority of
the work was performed exclusively in common areas, tenant
disruption was virtually non-existent.
“The new panel is doing
exactly what it was intended to do,” said Padgett. “Thankfully,
it has not yet been put to the test, but I’m confident that if
the time should come, the system will allow us to respond
quickly and efficiently.”
