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Make It Work Conventional Fire Alarms Mobile
Make It Work Conventional Fire Alarms Mobile
Chapter Headings:
• First Things First – What is a Fire Alarm System?
• Types of Fire Alarm System
• Life Safety and Supervision
• A Little History
• Supervision and Redundancy
• Wire is Fragile
• Basic Fire Alarm System Overview
• Conventional Fire Alarm System Supervision –
Checking Continuity
• FACP Panel Connections
• Fire Zone and Fire Alarm Loop
• Initiating Device Circuit (IDC): Conventional Input Loop
• Notification Appliance Circuit (NAC): Conventional
Output Loop
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Douglas Krantz www.douglaskrantz.com
Get the Book “Make It Work - Conventional Fire Alarms”
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Conventional Fire Alarm System Supervision
– Checking Continuity
On conventional
fire alarm
systems, the
devices are
simple and
don’t have a
way
of saying that
they aren’t
working, so each of the devices has to be regularly tested.
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Get the Book “Make It Work - Conventional Fire Alarms”
Supervision is
getting people to
call for service.
In essence, that’s
what supervision is
about: someone seeing a problem and then making sure
the fire alarm system is fixed.
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Class B and Class A Fire Alarm Loop
Electrical Path
For a Class B circuit, the loop starts out at one of the Class
B zone terminals of the fire alarm panel, goes through the
end-of-line resistor, and returns to the other Class B zone
terminal.
65
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Get the Book “Make It Work - Conventional Fire Alarms”
current stops, the continuity tester (FACP) displays a
yellow trouble light and sounds a trouble buzzer.
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Get the Book “Make It Work - Conventional Fire Alarms”
Wiring Supervision
Class B Supervision
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Get the Book “Make It Work - Conventional Fire Alarms”
Supervised wire is
connected so that all
continuity checking current
goes in and out of the
terminals of each device. If
any device is
disconnected, the
continuity is
interrupted and
supervision says
there’s trouble.
Like beads on a
necklace, all devices
are daisy-chained with the end-of-line resistor as the last
device.
When adding
devices, make sure
that all the wires are
always checked for
continuity
(supervised).
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Get the Book “Make It Work - Conventional Fire Alarms”
Class A Supervision and Redundancy
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Douglas Krantz www.douglaskrantz.com
Get the Book “Make It Work - Conventional Fire Alarms”
The problem
is that a timely
manner may
not be good
enough. Class
B wiring may
show there’s a
problem, but
in addition to
showing that
there’s a
problem, Class
A wiring goes
a step further. Until the problem is fixed, Class A wiring
goes around a broken wire or connection. In order to
include the devices beyond the break, Class A wiring uses a
redundant back-feed path.
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Get the Book “Make It Work - Conventional Fire Alarms”
The idea of
Class A is two-
fold. It’s to find
out in a timely
manner that
there’s a
problem so the
wiring can be
fixed, and in
the meantime,
so the fire
alarm system
will continue to
work, it
provides a redundant method of communication.
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Get the Book “Make It Work - Conventional Fire Alarms”
If a wire breaks or a connection comes loose, the fire
alarm panel will switch from considering the loop as a
single supervised Class A loop to two unsupervised class B
loops.
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Get the Book “Make It Work - Conventional Fire Alarms”
The whole
idea behind
Class A, of
course, is
that the
loop will
extend out
of the panel
in one
direction,
travel
around the
building,
connect to
all the devices, and return to the panel from another
direction. This is so that if something like a forklift breaks
the wires, the return path would be far enough away that
only one pair of Class A wires would be cut.
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