New fire detection panel at work... companies that do it?

This doesn't need to be a long thread.  I've been asked to get three quotes for a new fire detection panel.  Ours was installed in 1998 and it is failing.

The old panel is a Simplex Grinnell... which was bought by Tyco... which was bought by Johnson Controls.  I called them multiple times and it keeps telling me their number is disconnected, so I called corporate and they forwarded me to a voicemail where I have now left two messages and no reply.  I'm kind of writing them off.

I called ADT commercial and at least talked to a person, so quote #1 is in the works

I want to get three quotes to bring to the bosses.  Help me out with a list of some other companies who install fire detection panels.

In case it matters, this is a live performance theater with a building capacity of 450-ish.  The name of the game is configurability.  I need to be able to enable/disable certain monitors depending on the show.  If we're using fog/haze fx, I need to be able to disable the smoke part, but I could leave IR or heat enabled.  The current panel is either ON or OFF for any given zone, so it's not really legal because for haze/fog shows I have to disable all monitors.

Companies?

https://www.bfpe.com

or

https://pennfire.com

you need a dealer. They can fix upgrade etc. I used to work in the industry many many years ago. Google "fire protection" 

Reaching out to my friendly neighborhood EE.  I'll let you know if she gives me any info.

Who inspects your fire extinguishers?  Ask them. 

OK, my EE got back to me.  She also recommends BFPE International (410-768-2200) in Hanover, MD and adds ARK Systems (410-997-0188)in Columbia, MD.  I speecifically mentioned you were in south-central PA.

Stay away from Simplex Grinnell. Your application is too small for them to give a E36 M3. 
 

Do you need a national chain?  A local burglar alarm company can probably handle it. 
 

Strongly doubt you will be replacing only your panel. They will want all new devices, and wiring too. A LOT of rules have changed since your old system. 
 

Your first conversation should be with your fire marshal. He will determine what you need. 
 

Expect this to cost $30K +. 

Who does your monitoring now?  They can help. 
 

You are going to be financially better off if you "repair existing system" instead of "install new system". Your old devices are proprietary, and only the old company can reuse them. 
 

But you also should be able to get a discount on your insurance rates for a new system. 

Do you have a fire curtain?  Sprinklers?

Paul, I need to be compliant.  Period.

Don't need a national chain.  Actually prefer local, but none of the local offices I've found have a phone.  You call the local number and it automatically rings some national corporate office.

I realize that this would be a complete top-to-bottom installation.  I don't expect the old - likely analog - sensors in there to be compatible with anything new.

No sprinklers, no fire curtain.  It's not a proscenium theater, it's a blackbox, so basically a warehouse with offices.

The system has no monitor.  According to the fire marshall and Simplex, it has never been monitored ever.  Fire department doesn't know it exists other than they inspected it 23 years ago, and Simplex doesn't know it exists other than I called them asking questions about the system.  They don't even have a record of the thing being sold.  According to the Fire Marshall, monitoring is not required.  According to the insurance company, it means a discount if we do have monitoring.

Repairing existing system is a no-go for two reasons.  The panel has been obsolete for 10 years.  Zero parts.  Tyco/Grinnell rep said that he hasn't seen one in use for a very long time. The only reason he could help me was because he was 65 and vaguely remembered the good-ole days when those panels were used.  Secondly, there is nothing "wrong" with it, it's just a terrible application for the theater.  Longer story... in 1999, this building (our former proscenium theater) was converted to a production center... offices, rehearsal space, storage, shop.  It was never intended to be used as a performance space again.  The system they put in uses zones that are integrated... meaning, there are four nodes that correspond to four physical zones as opposed to each node controlling a sensor like IR, heat, and smoke.  Now that we do shows here again, I can't use pyro, fog, or haze because I can't disable just the smoke sensors, I have to turn off an entire zone.  Normally that would be OK as long as I had someone monitoring the panel, but because each node is the entire zone, disabling it means that it completely ignores that zone... no alerts, no manual "pull here" station, no nothing.  On or off.

Regarding the cost, it's not really my job.  Board chair says "Curtis, get me three quotes to replace the fire detection panel."  That means I make phone calls, meet the rep, and report back.  Typically, this happens a lot.  "Curtis get me three quotes...." and then I get back to them with three quotes that are obviously way higher than they expected and I never hear another peep about it.  I do know that my word carries a very disproportionate amount of weight there.  I sometimes have to be careful what I ask for.  I once complained to a board member that my hard drive crashed.  They mistakenly assumed it was something to do with the theater and later that night a board member drove to my house with a $500 check to get it fixed.  I had to sheepishly explain that it was the hard drive in my personal external HD and I just lost my iTunes music.  Sometimes I ask for a new saw and get nothing.  Other times I complain about the internet being slow and the next morning there is someone from Comcast in my office.  You can never tell.  I may have complained about not being able to use fog and someone on the board decided to back me up.  Don't know.  I just do as I'm told.

I know that I'm in compliance now.  We just had someone come in and recert all of our fire extinguishers and signed off on the panel.  I have no idea who it was, but I assume it was from the Township Fire department.  I wasn't even there when he did it.

Thanks guys for the links

Hmm... a lot to think about. 
 

It's been 30 years since I worked in a black box, and I wasn't responsible for fire protection. So, I'm not much help. 
 

I'll be interested to hear the outcome. I'm pretty surprised the fire marshal is not requiring monitoring in an assembly space, and the issue of disabling parts of the system will be interesting to hear the solutions. (That's a total no-go in the environments I work in)

Good luck with it- keep us posted. 

One other note...

Being in compliance with a 23 year old system is completely different than being up to code. Generally speaking, existing systems are never required to be up to code. They are required to be functional and in good operating order in accordance with the code when they were installed. 
 

Installing a new system always means it has to be up to current code. 

Here's how I understand it from the legal side.  This is anecdotal, and may be the practical application (handshake with the fire marshall)

The other theater is a massive proscenium house that was built 20 years ago.  It is staffed with partly union labor, it has tours from children's theater all the way to names like Neil Young, Lady Gaga, and Janet Jackson.  It is a compliant performance space to the last hair.  The building also houses a children's science center and on any given day there are 500 kids aged 2 to 16 in the building.

Their sensors have IR, smoke (in the form of visual detection as opposed to the bi-metal physical smoke detection you might have in your house), and heat.  They have the ability to legally disable the smoke/visual and the IR in the stage and auditorium.  They have to disable the smoke if we use haze/fog, and they always have to disable the IR or the 156 incandescent fixtures pumping out 1000-2000 watts each looks like a bonfire.

They can actually (again anecdotally/legally) disable the entire audible alert system for the stage as long as someone monitors the panel for flashing lights.

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

Interesting...

That building is probably also sprinklered and monitored. 
 

My life in theatre was a long time ago. My current life is deeply in life safety.  I know what I have to go through now, and I understand some of the special requirements of theatre, but I don't know much about where those two worlds collide. 

I honestly forget if the proscenium has sprinklers.  If it was current code in 1999 when it was built, I'm sure it does.  It does have an automatic fire curtain that has already paralyzed someone.  An accidental pull of the pin let the curtain fall and folded a janitor in half the wrong way.  Good example of how safety sometimes isn't safe.

The high school theater where I'm currently working on a show was built at about the same time.  It has a sprinkler system, but no fire curtain.  Yet another theater a few towns over has neither, but at the time it was built (60s) they could have fully manual systems and still be in compliance.  The main curtain has a nomex (or similar) layer inside it, so the procedure in case of fire is to just close the curtain manually.... which traps the actors on a stage with only one exit door that is down a flight of stairs... but that's a different story.

I think my main goal is to be able to use fog/haze/small pyro without setting off false alarms.  I have tried all kinds of things and every time it bites me.  I thought I had it all figured out one time with fans and disabling a zone, but the night before opening it triggered an alarm because the HVAC pulled enough into an adjacent zone.  I had to cut the haze and we did an entire show where one of the major scenic components was a foggy Scottish Moor... and we had no fog.

I know that 80% of the audience didn't care, but I felt embarrassed for the actors trying to act like they couldn't see each other when they were 5' apart.

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

I love your commitment to doing your craft with excellence. I have it too. 
 

But it will NEVER trump public safety.  Willing suspension of disbelief works just fine sometimes. 
 

I am intrigued to learn what your solutions end up being. 

Side note...

Why was there a manual pin to release a automatic fire curtain?  And why was it so unbalanced?

Modern systems require triggers activated by rate of heat rise devices. 

Trapping the actors...

From a life safety perspective, jumping off the stage is never an acceptable fire egress route, and the staff (actors, etc) would be caught in a space they are intimately familiar with the egress routes, etc.  

The primary fire risk is ON the stage, but the largest number of people is the audience, ALL of whom are completely unfamiliar with the egress routes, and who may include handicapped, elderly, children, etc.  
 

I realize it's an uncomfortable concept, but a good life safety plan would give primary consideration to the assembly space and give priority to protecting audience from the potential ignition sources, and as much time as possible to exit.  Not the actors. 
 

It's similar in a car dealership, for example. The shop is the primary risk. Protective measures are made to separate the consumers and office staff in the showroom from the risk, not the mechanics in the shop.
 

It's always uncomfortable when you are on the risk side of the firewall.  That means you need to take extra measures to train your staff well in how to respond to an emergency. 
 

I've done over 150 productions in theatres. I have very few memories of emergency training for volunteer staff and actors. 
 

SVreX (Forum Supporter) said:

Side note...

Why was there a manual pin to release a automatic fire curtain?  And why was it so unbalanced?

Modern systems require triggers activated by rate of heat rise devices. 

There are three releases for the fire curtain there:  Heat/rise, a solenoid release when the appropriate alarm is alerted, or manual pin in case of alarm failure.  The manual pin has a secondary clevis pin so you can't accidentally pull it.  You have to pull the spring pin, THEN pull the cable pin.  Our fire training there includes what to do when things work as normal... Escort people out, then rendezvous with other staff on a specific corner outside.  If you notice a fire and the alarm doesn't go off, you yank a manual station switch, the curtain comes down, and escort/meet outside.  Pulling the manual pin isn't something we're asked to do or trained to do, I think it's more of a fire department thing, but it would only be needed if two redundant systems failed first.  It's also probably used in yearly inspections to make sure it falls at the right speed, and all of the associated rigging hardware needs to be retorqued periodically.

I wasn't there when the injury happened, but my buddy Brian (production manager) instructed a new stagehand - who had obviously lied on his resume - to go over to the pin rail and release the rope closest to the plaster wall.  He went over, and sure enough, the (wire) rope closest to the plaster was the fire curtain release.

It doesn't come down that fast.  It's on a counterweight system with a hydraulic ram to control the last couple feet.  It's supposed to be something like a 5 second fall.  It wasn't really the speed of the fall as much as it was the well-aged janitor that was under it.  He tried to exit it's path, lost his balance, and the weight of the curtain (which I'm told is 1850 lbs total) folded the top of his body over onto the bottom, kinda sideways and backwards.  Normal guy would have gotten some dust on his face and a pulled muscle.  Didn't fare too well for the old Janitor.

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

That's awful. Very sad. 

What model Simplex panel is it? The problem we've (I work in fire alarm inspections) had with simplex is they really don't give out info to us about how to work on their systems. If they aren't really giving you the time of day a new install is probably the best course of action given you have the budget for it.  You'll end up working with a local company who'll give you a quote for whatever system they happen to be a dealer for.  For example, the company I work for mainly deals in Honeywell products.  As has already been stated you're looking at replacing all the devices (both alarm initiating and notification devices), the Fire Alarm Panel and any NAC panels you have and adding the communicator for monitoring which will either be landline phone or Ethernet with a cellular backup.

I'm guessing the fact that you reminded the fire marshal the system existed is why you had to suddenly get an inspection.  There should be a yearly inspection of the system following whatever version of the NFPA code your state has plus any state and local codes in addition.  Same thing for the sprinkler riser.

It's a model 4005 but I don't remember the submodel.  I was told that I could still find refurbished parts if it was an 85xx or higher, but it's a model that they stopped producing in 2001 or so.

Yeah those are a PITA to get into.