Hey folks,
Apologies for asking so many questions, but you folks have been an awesome! My boss thinks I am so smart… Rest assured, I tell him about this Board.
They guy who runs facilities for our whole area tells me we have to drop our 2 POTS lines for the fire panel, and replace with a Mesh Fire Radio Transmitter. Anybody know anything about? He wants to save the monthly cost of the land lines. BUT, IMHO we would still need a reliable backup line incase the “RF Mesh Network” were to drop due to extended power failure.
Any thoughts / experience with this technology for FACP communication?
What wireless mesh device you have to use is completely dependent on what’s available in your area. These are usually only campus wide or city wide networks, not a national thing like POTs. That said, POT’s are being sunset-ted and will no longer exist in the not so distant future, and the two lines dedicated to fire alarm are expensive. The alternative is IP, cellular, wireless or wireless mesh (if available). With the cellular and IP your dialer plugs into those panels instead of into a POT’s line and they take over from there.
As for reliability, your FACP is only backed up for 24 hours anyways, so any extended outage will effect you regardless. With POT’s lines the FACP reports in every 24 hours, so if the panel isn’t communicating the central station may not know about it for 24 hours.
With IP/cellular the transmitter typically reports in every few minutes or quicker (with RF it’s every 8 hours, but it’s usually a lot quicker than that), so the central station know’s a lot sooner if they’ve lost connection to the FACP. Basically if the phone lines go down the central station might not know about it for 24 hours when the FACP fails to check in, whereas if the other methods go down the central station will know about it a lot sooner when the FACP fails to check in at it’s set interval. This kind of solves your power outage issue, since the fire department should know about it almost immediately.
Also, I think the AHJ has to approve any alternative means to POTs lines still.
Hi CHris,
Thank you very much for the information. I will indeed call the Fire Marshal 1st thing in the AM.
We have a health/safety generator, which the FACP receives power. So in theory, if we stuck with the POTS line, we should have coverage for as long as the telco keeps the phones up. I suspect the telco can keep things working a lot longer than our mesh RF folks in the area.
We have >12 people living in the building, so we would have to evac if we lose fire protection.
Just trying to avoid the cost (& pushy salesman) from the mesh RF transmitter. It’s like $600 for the box plus $55 / mo for using the RF mesh signal.
That sounds like a terrible deal, ask about using a cellular dialer instead. Should be cheaper, and the equipment should cost less.
Check out the Dsc 4010cf. Very reliable and fast! You will have the ability to to point Id via telco or general zone reporting. (Alarm,trouble,supervisory)