Fire alarm devices question in a condominium building (4 floors). Bedrooms requirments?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Cartoon1

Cartoon1

Senior Member
Location
Florida
Occupation
Electrical Engineer
I have a condominium building for a 4 story building. The building will have a fire alarm system of course. I'm a little confused regarding the devices that i need to provide in the condos themselves. My understanding that all bedrooms/outside of bedrooms halls will get a local smoke/carbon monoxide combo detector and the living room will get a visual/horn combo type device (that will be connected to the building fire alarm system). My question is does the bedrooms also needs a visual or horn notification device?? These condos will be for sale.

It makes me wonder what if we had the same setup but as an apartment building where the units are for rent as example. would the bedrooms need bedrooms also needs a visual or horn notification device?? kind of like in hotels?

Thank you,
 
Last edited:
Depending on how many condos you have in the building, you may end up needing to provide low frequency notification in the sleeping units which cannot be accomplished with horns. It will require a speaker based system or using low frequency sounder bases with system smoke detectors.
 
d0nut said:
Depending on how many condos you have in the building, you may end up needing to provide low frequency notification in the sleeping units which cannot be accomplished with horns. It will require a speaker based system or using low frequency sounder bases with system smoke detectors.
Click to expand...
33 units, is there a chart i can look at somewhere?
 
It will be based on your building occupancy classification in the IBC. I know it is required in Group R-1 and R-2 occupancies. It may also be required by NFPA 101. The requirements for the installation are stated in NFPA 72.
 
d0nut said:
It will be based on your building occupancy classification in the IBC. I know it is required in Group R-1 and R-2 occupancies. It may also be required by NFPA 101. The requirements for the installation are stated in NFPA 72.
Click to expand...
i believe since it is an R-2 then you are correct, they will be required. If that is the case, wouldn't a low frequency sounder be also required in the living room?
 
I have fallen asleep on my living room couch enough that I would say it should be a low frequency sounder in that space.

Since you are already providing a fire alarm system for the building, I would make all of the devices in your individual condos system smoke detectors with low frequency sounder bases. It will make the installation simpler since all the devices in the space will be the same. It will also allow system supervision of the condo devices.
 
Cartoon1 said:
I have a condominium building for a 4 story building. The building will have a fire alarm system of course. I'm a little confused regarding the devices that i need to provide in the condos themselves. My understanding that all bedrooms/outside of bedrooms halls will get a local smoke/carbon monoxide combo detector and the living room will get a visual/horn combo type device (that will be connected to the building fire alarm system). My question is does the bedrooms also needs a visual or horn notification device?? These condos will be for sale.

It makes me wonder what if we had the same setup but as an apartment building where the units are for rent as example. would the bedrooms need bedrooms also needs a visual or horn notification device?? kind of like in hotels?

Thank you,
Click to expand...
If you are running anything like the IBC in your jurisdiction, what you describe is all that's required. You will need to see what the project specs and drawings call for to understand if you need anything above and beyond.
 
Depends on what building code you're using. Most recent IBC is requiring low frequency sounders for local and building system notification in bedrooms and living area. This really makes things very expensive. For a 30 unit 48 bedroom building it was $12000-14000 more for system smoke detectors instead of 120v interconnected smoke alarms. That's not including additional labor and not subtracting the smoke alarms
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top