In a fire alarm system installed in a campus facility (Like a college or business campus), if one building within the campus goes into alarm, would the entire campus be alerted and evacuated? Or only if two or more buildings within the campus also went into alarm would the entire campus be evacuated. I know that it is important not to cause a ruckus, so if only one building went into alarm, it wouldn’t make sense to evacuate the entire campus. And for the second question, in a fire alarm system in a campus facility, does each individual building within the campus have a sub panel tied into a network connected to a main panel? Or would each individual building within the campus have its own panel that is networked to all of the other panels?
Also i’m not sure if something like this would be put into its own topic, or if there is a topic for questions. I’m fairly new to the forums, and i don’t know every single thing about posting to it. And yes, i have visited the beginners center, and never found anything on this.
First, unless the buildings were physically connected, then no. Setting off the alarm in one building would not set off the alarms in the others. There would be no need too. And even if there is a physical connection, they might not even cross trip each other. If you have two separate buildings and there is a physical link between them, that physical like can be considered a “horizontal exit” and people from the building in alarm could “exit” into the other building. Providing the proper fire walls and doors were in place.
Second, really depends on the campus and how much they want to dump into a fire alarm system. As long as the fire department knows which building the actual fire is located, they could have one huge networked system. Or they could just use separate panels in each building, isolated from eachother, that all communicate back somewhere. And the communication can be just as simple as a slave dialer. Each has their advantage and disadvantages.
I’ll add to the above: the school where I attended undergrad (Buffalo) has the student apartment complexes on giant networked systems. Each building has a 4005 networked to a 4100 and an annunciator at the community center/complex office. Buildings can go off individually. For drills, everything can be set off at once from the 4100. As far as the Buffalo campus worked, outside of the apartment complexes, all buildings had individual systems that were networked solely for supervision by state police at the campus substation.
Not a stupid question. I’ve wondered the same thing on different campuses I’ve been on. The answer is that it can really vary.
For example, at a middle school that I worked at, there were 15 or so separate buildings on a mini-campus that were all tied into one old Simplex panel in the front office. At the University of Arizona, every building has a separate Simplex system. I’m not sure how they are networked. All the buildings have relatively new panels, even those with older devices. I would guess they are tied into a central station on campus, rather than being networked to each other.
I recently worked on a job where my company was replacing all the panels at a campus of schools in a nearby small town. This campus has an elementary, middle, and high school, as well as a common cafeteria and gym building, library building, administration building, and shop building. We installed Gamewell-FCI S3 panels in each building and pulled fiber-optic cables between the buildings to network each panel to each other. Each building alarms individually. But, we programmed a button on each panel to do a campus-wide fire drill. Basically, they act as separate systems, but if one building goes into alarm, we can see what caused the alarm on any annunciator or panel in the network. And only one panel needs to be connected to the central monitoring station.
All of that information was greatly helpful. I knew that if one building went into alarm, it wouldn’t make sense to evacuate the entire campus. Since a fire in one building would most likely be able to be taken care of without affecting any other buildings within the campus at all. I knew that the status of each building within the campus should be able to be accessed from any other building within the campus. I just wasn’t sure exactly how they are usually laid out. I’m sure in special cases though, if a fire in one building posed a threat to another building, both buildings would have to be evacuated. Such as in a building with explosive materials or in a case where a central pipeline that runs throughout the campus that carried a flammable gas such as natural gas was at risk of spreading the fire from building to building (Even though a scenario like that probably wouldn’t be likely to happen.) My point is though, it would only make sense for one building to have the capability of alerting other buildings.
The college I attended in my city has a huge Notifier/Honeywell ONYX system. The buildings on campus aren’t separated, but they are all labeled (I.E. A building, B building, T building, etc). It is a two stage voice evacuation system. How it works at the college is whenever there is an alarm in one of the buildings (let’s say building B), all the alarms will go off in the entire system. But, only building B will have an evacuation signal. The rest of the buildings will have a alert signal, meaning they don’t have to evacuate just yet or at all.
Each building has about 1 or 2 panels in it, one in a mechanical room and another at the main firefighters entrance for that building. There is also beacons installed at every firefighters entrance, which goes off whenever that building goes into alarm (used from the last system there which was a total mess). there is a central panel in the security office, as well as a Firstvision annunciator. The firstvision annunciator is a small graphic annunciator, with a map of our entire campus and all the devices in their exact location. Whenever there is an alarm, the annunciator will place the device that was activated on the screen and show the exact location.
So, in the situation at this building, when one panel goes into alarm, they all do. But, only one building will evacuate people, and the rest will just alert people there is a situation in another building.