The hospital’s I.T. server room is covered by an aspirating system. This air sampling system has its own dedicated E3 Series panel tying it to the overall fire alarm network.
Another priority was to minimize impacts to surgeries during a fire alarm event, says Curtis. So in the operating suites, they installed two laser detectors that combine four different technologies to verify the presence of smoke and fire. A photoelectric chamber monitors airborne particulate for smoke; electrochemical cell technology senses for carbon monoxide (CO) produced by smoldering fires; infrared (IR) sensing measures for light and flame signatures; and thermal detection monitors temperature. To ensure rapid, accurate detection, both detectors in each suite are cross-zoned and their signals sent to a surgery control desk for alarm confirmation.
“The alarm detection doesn’t immediately initiate a response — it’s verified and checked, first,” says Curtis. “That was used to provide kind of a pre-indication that maybe we were approaching a smoke threshold. Certain operations and procedures generate smoke. We wanted to make sure that procedure wouldn’t just ‘bam!’ and set off a fire alarm.
“Being that the facility uses a total area coverage approach, we didn’t have the option of eliminating detection in that space altogether,” he adds.
Fire System Integrates With Access, HVAC and More
St. Luke’s fire alarm network is fully integrated with access control systems, air handling, elevator controls and more, says John Lopez, owner/construction manager of Fire Sentry Systems Inc. in Kuna, Idaho, the local Gamewell-FCI distributor who handled th
e project. That heavy integration means a lot of automated responses when an alarm is tripped in a smoke zone.
“Doors would drop, HVAC units would shut down and dampers would close. It would close off the particular smoke zone as if it were the only area of coverage in the building,” he says.
A pre-alarm in the operating suites initiates certain exhaust functions, closing individual dampers, ramping up the dedicated air-handler unit for the suite to 100% to exhaust the air — ideally pulling the smoke out before reaching alarm state. Work on integration with the air-handling system was extensive and mimicked the zoning inherent in the smoke detection system.
“We wanted to minimize disruptions, even on the air systems. Patient care being paramount here, under certain conditions, shutting down air to areas of the hospital can be a big deal pretty quickly,” says Curtis. “We worked out a zoned approach on all of the dampers, and there were 560-plus dampers that had to be controlled. We placed zone controls for dampers within a smoke zone, then cross-zoned all the dampers on the dividing walls — we ended up with probably 30 or 40 separately controlled zone groups.”
Planning an alarm response was intense, particularly when the issue is infant safety. To avoid an infant abduction taking place due to a bogus fire alarm opening all entryways, the E3 Series system is programmed to limit access to the maternity ward until the alarm is verified and cleared.
Workstation Pinpoints Problems
Displaying a comprehensive view of the entire facility’s layout, floor by floor, with the location and status of all major fire alarm components is a FocalPoint graphic workstation, housed in the maintenance department. With pinpoint accuracy, the screen’s graphics automatically zero-in on the location of an alert in real-time.
“That is a huge asset to our team,” explains Lisa Knecht, team leader. “It’s a quick display — if we have any trouble come in — any alarms, anything unexpected — if someone’s in the vicinity we can go straight there and see exactly the detector that’s going off. The address comes up on the screen’s blueprint.”
The Authority Having Jurisdiction (AHJ) required the hospital to include the FocalPoint Mobile monitoring system. This wireless version, housed on a rugged, military-spec tablet, provides the same, real-time information on system status and alerts, while aiding in emergency response. Located at the emergency room entrance, firefighters can take the tablet with them to quickly decipher the problem and plan an effective response. Lopez believes that in a 732,000-square-foot hospital, any technological advantage afforded to the local fire department was a bonus.
“More than anything, they like the idea that the firefighters could take it off the wall and take it with them when they respond to a fire,” says Lopez. “The fire department, once they heard about the mobile, really pushed for it. It can guide them to where the fire is and gives them the quickest path to get to the fire, so it cuts down on their response time.”
