NFPA

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ajengin

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I am wondering what are the NFPA regulations on emergency lighting systems.

Our situation is night light and battery pack emergency lights on different branch circuit.
Fire marshall says that these lights have to be on the same branch circuit ahead of a switch to be considered emergency.

Why when our situation we have lighting regardless if there is power or not?
 
Re: NFPA

The idea is that if the night light branch CB trips than the emergency light will come on. otherwise if you had all but the night lights on and that CB tripped the emergency light would not come on, creating a hazard.
 
Re: NFPA

Anish you need to look at 700.12(E)

Here is only a small part of it.

The branch circuit feeding the unit equipment shall be the same branch circuit as that serving the normal lighting in the area and connected ahead of any local switches.
Click to expand...
 
Re: NFPA

I see...

now the issue arises is what if the lights are used for normal lighting and emergency lighting. These lights in question are on 24/7 and have battery-pack in-case of emergency situations.

do we still follow 700.12?
 
Re: NFPA

Anish in my opinion the 'normal' lights are any lights that are not 'emergency' lights.

Typically the night light circuit is the circuit of choice to feed the battery units with as that circuit is often unswitched.
 
Re: NFPA

If these light are a fluorescent type fixture and you are planning to install a "bodine" type or emergency ballast in the fixture then you must bring a constant feed into the fixture to maintain the emergency ballast. Also this ballast typically shares wiring with the normal ballast in the fixture so they would have to be from the same cicuit.
 
Re: NFPA

If you're buying new luminaires you can get them with the Bodine brand or other emergency unit already wired up from the factory. But I sure hate to retrofit those things! They provide a lot of pain in posterior areas of the human body. :D
 
Re: NFPA

"they provide alot of pain in the posterior area of the human body" Kent I can relate to that. I also agree with you about the EBU's I don't trust those bodine ballasts I have seen to many go bad to soon after they have been installed, and the light output seems to much less than from a typical EBU.
 
Re: NFPA

The light output is not great but does serve the purpose without the looks of an EMG light.Installing the bodines is a piece of cake,takes maybe 5 minutes.As an overal solution it is faster than wiring in a box for the emg and installing it.
 
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