I have taken over a restaurant that has a main building and a separate bar. Each has its own FACP. We are having phone line issues and would like to switch to cellular.
My question is, is it code compliant to have one cellular unit communicate two FACPs, and if so, how would one wire this.
usually a phone line is the primary means of transmission, and cellular is the backup.
you could probably get it approved to have both report with the same dialer, especially if you set up zones. have the fire alarm panel in one building monitor the other for an alarm, set up the DACT for contact ID, and have it report the restaurant as one zone, and the bar as another. usually the FD wants to know what building they’re going too, you should be able to set up the zones with the monitoring station so they know zone 1 is building X and zone 2 is building Y.
From what I understand the restaurant has a fire alarm panel and the bar has a fire alarm panel - and they are 100% independent of one another?
First, does the restaurant and bar share the same deeded address or are they different. In other words, is the restaurant “!23 Main Street” and the bar “125 Main Street”. What I am getting at is when the fire department responds to the alarm, they really want to know which address they need to go to. If they share the same address, you could do one communicator for both panels. If they are separate, you will probably have to go with separate communicators.
Second (and this sort of relates to the first question), are the restaurant and bar in the same building or two separate buildings? If they are in the same building, typically you want all fire alarm panels in the same building to be cross-connected. If the fire alarm in the bar goes into alarm, you want to trip the fire alarm panel in the restaurant. Local codes can really dictate if this needs to happen or not, but as a general practice you will want to cross-connect the panels. If you can cross-connect the panels (and that would be done by using the alarm relay on one panel connected to a zone on the second and vise-versa) you really only need to connect up one FACP to a communicator. You don’t need two alarms to be dispatched from the same location!
Third, all fire alarm systems that are monitored must have TWO independent means of communications. Typically this is two telephone lines or a single telephone line and cellular backup. The cellular backups I’ve seen usually only count as one means of communications. I’m not even sure if they have one that will count as that “two independent means”. But cellular backups are way more expensive then telephone lines. What is the problem with the telephone lines that the phone company can’t give you reliable service to the d-mark? I would imagine you already have phone lines for the business.
Probably a discussion for another topic, but land lines are being sunset. Meaning, the phone company won’t be installing POTS in new buildings anymore… and probably aren’t too eager to maintain current ones, leaving a gap for us fire alarm guys. that’s why the latest codes have thrown in the ability to use IP dialers with cellular backups and the like.
telco companies would rather run fiber into a building and do all of their services over a data connection.
same address, separate buildings.
NFPA now only requires one means of communication when using cellular. As long as a failure is annunciated within one hour, no secondary path is required.
I am leaning towards a trip circuit method. that way two panels are not competing for zones or communications.
Yeah, we don’t get too many cellular communicators around here. And the few that we do are always as a backup to a telephone line. So I wasn’t exactly sure if one could be used solely as the communicating method. But if 72 says it’s good, it’s good!
I would say as long as the buildings are the same address you should be fine to have a single communicator. Like Chris said, try to make it so you can differentiate between the restaurant and the bar. The fire company may or may not get that information, but at least for your information, you will know which building you are getting a signal from. I would suggest adding a horn/strobe to the outside of each building. This way when the fire department pulls up, as least they have some sort of external clue which building they need to investigate.
I’m not sure what you mean by the “trip circuit method” but let’s say you put the cellular communicator in the restaurant, how are you going to get a signal from the bar to the restaurant?
One other thought - I would check with your local AHJ, just to make sure they would be ok with this setup.
i thought the single means of communication only applied to single family dwellings?