Fire Alarm and Data cabling

[tadmin]

Hello everyone, I am new to this board, and have a question. I did search for the answer first, but I did not find any true answers.

I a the Telecom Administrator for a Medical Corp in Washington state. We have recently built a few new buildings, and I am having an arguement with the contractor.

I am in charge of the data and voice communications for our building, and we have a very stringent policy on their install. Were I am having a problem is with the other low voltage guys.

Of course our building has fire alarm and security alarms and also has Nurse call lighting. I am having a issue with those three. We specify what our data/voice installer can do, and he is kept to it. To a T. The bad part is those other three come in and do whatever they want. They put their cables in our j hooks, and they use our penetrations. Some of the time, once those people install their stuff (however they feel like it), the standards we have set for our installer are no longer valid, like conduit fill ratio's and such.

Does anyone know who or how these guys are regulated? I am guessing it is the electrical inspector. Are they really allowed to come in and run their cables however they want?

 

[ron]

Re: Fire Alarm and Data cabling

No, definitely not. They are regulated by the NEC. If a permit is pulled for their work, then a local inspector will inspect. Often the specification written by the arch or engineer will offer guidance and a final punchlist inspection.
Fire alarm is covered by the NEC Article 760,
Security alarms are covered by Article 725, 800 or 830 depending on the application,
and Nurse call lighting would be Article 517, 725, 800 or 830 depending on the application

 

[hbiss]

Re: Fire Alarm and Data cabling

I doubt you will get much help from the electrical inspector and the NEC. Low voltage is much less stringent than wiring for light and power(class 1). Conduit cable fill, for instance, is a non issue.

The place to address YOUR requirements is in the original specs. They should have been clearly spelled out in the specs by your architect or engineer where they would have been considered by the bidders and made part of the contract for the successful bidder.

Of course hindsight is 20/20, but at this point you have no power to enforce anything that is not specifically in the contract. Sorry.

-Hal

 

[tadmin]

Re: Fire Alarm and Data cabling

That is pretty much where it is at right now. Our Architect is going to the engineers to see what was specified.

My voice/data vendor had installed their own conduits for fire wall penetrations, that will be a small savior. Being as he installed them, they were not on the specs for any other vendor, therefore, I can and will have everyones cable removed from those stubs through the walls. That will be the only thing I know will happen, hopefully the engineers spec'd it out right also and this whole mess can be cleaned up.

Thank you everyone for replying, it sucks feeling you are in the dark under a huge world of specs.

 

[tom baker]

Re: Fire Alarm and Data cabling

"Does anyone know who or how these guys are regulated?"
Sure (this answer is in context of the Washington State Electrical Laws)
Work for which a permit is not required is in Chapter 296-46B section 900 8 (b)
Other than that all work must be permitted and inspected.
AHJ's in washington state are not generally familar with telecommunications wiring. Some telecommunications wiring is exempt from permits and inspections, but any wiring passing thru a firewall must be permitted and inspected.
The telecom industry in Washington State approached L&I 4 years ago and wanted telecom installers to be licensed contractors, permits and inspections due to poor workman ship issues.

My suggestion for you is to contact the local L&I area electrical supervisor and document what you've found, and if possible who is doing the work. They will follow up on this. Substandard work needs to be identified and corrected, it gives all of us a bad name. Just because its low voltage does not mean its safe.
PM me if you have any other questions, I'm from Washington State and am familiar with the WAC and RCW.

If you have any other questions

 

[tadmin]

Re: Fire Alarm and Data cabling

I was grandfathered in to the new L&I laws, so I do have the Administrators certificate. I am not familiar with the security and fire people though. As you said also though, Wa. St does not know alot about the telecom field, so how would they know if 4 different trades are trying to vie for the same space?

On a side note, and I thought I would ask everyone for their thoughts. You know the electricians go around and paint all fire conduits and power box's red. Well, we were contimpalting setting our own standard on the construction site by using blue paint to point out what is voice/data also. We have all ready set a standard on the colors of cable the different trades can use, so now we will just limit them to their own space a little more. The engineers can design for this.

Is blue a color not used all ready by another trade?

 

[hbiss]

Re: Fire Alarm and Data cabling

As far as I know blue is fine. Matter of fact there is blue EMT for data/telecom/sound brought to you by the same people who make red EMT for fire systems.

Problem is not much of this stuff is run in EMT.

I wouldn't suggest painting cable. Keep in mind that LV cables are available in many colors for a reason- so different systems and parts of systems can be identified. If you restrict LV cable to one color you destroy a valuable identification method. It's one thing to require FA conduit and boxes (when used) and wiring to be red in color. Pretty stupid to restrict anything else to one color.

Instead I have seen specs specify what color will be used for what. For instance blue is used for all data drops, yellow for backbones, white for voice. There is probably a BICSI standard for this and anything this large should have been designed by someone who at least is familiar with them.

So again this goes back to the design stage and the written specs. Sounds to me like your engineer/architect should be fired for incompetance.

-Hal

 

[tadmin]

Re: Fire Alarm and Data cabling

No, we would not paint cable, we would paint the j hooks and the conduits....thats it.

Right now we use Blue for voice/data (we use IP phones so everything is cat 5e and no need to tell the difference), we require red for fire, yellow for alarm, white for nurse call lighting, and yellow for security, and then grey for paging.

 

[jrdsg]

Re: Fire Alarm and Data cabling

hal makes a good point. we do both design/consulting and design/build at our firm, and these concerns are best addressed at the specification stage and enforced by the consultant or project manager that is overseeing compliance. once the project has been awarded it is a bit late to change the rules. then again, unfortunately a lot of electrical consultants and EE's know almost nothing about the low-voltage systems in their specs, which are in turn often ghost-written by manufacturer's reps or cut-and-pasted from other sites. really.

security alarm, cctv, and other low-voltage work is incredibly competitive and cost control is really cut-throat. many cost-cutting measures in the installation stage [forgoing conduit, jockeying with other trades for penetrations, and the like] are seen as necessary, if distasteful elements of completing these projects on time and on budget. we have largely abandoned bidding competitive tenders at our firm because we were tired of this race to the bottom.

only by exhaustively specifying a client's requirements for wire-management practices, conduit, etc, can the consultant protect his client from the natural cost-cutting mentality of low-voltage industry. cost-cutting excess is also much exaggerated by the relatively light code oversight of the low-voltage trades. electricians are compelled to install a lot of conduit and cable tray by the code and thus the code acts as a brake on the natural competitive tendency to axe every [possibly] unnecessary step or device. low-voltage guys are living in a comparatively deregulated universe where things are much more buyer-beware. if you want something done a certain way that really has to be spelled out before the bids come in.

one other thing that contributes to the wire-management problems in this thread is the order in which work gets done on most sites. often the security contract is not part of the master contract. i can't tell you how many projects we have done where the rest of the trades were substantially complete before we were awarded our part of the project. this makes it difficult to stake out the real estate you need for penetrations, cable tray, etc, when everyone else from sparky to the sprinkler guy have already got their stuff in place. this is as much a customer or general contractor problem as it is a problem with poor quality management on the part of security guys.

the best insurance? a good, long-term relationship with a competent security contractor. unlike the drywall guys you will probably be spending some quality time together in future.

sorry for the rant.