FastConvert-based upgrade transforms school’s life safety system

Initially, the school’s management team considered a complete replacement of the fire system in its entirety. However, following a site survey, specialist electrical company W R Fire & Security recognised the potential to focus instead on enhancing the existing conventional system by converting it to an addressable system using FastConvert.

Prior to opting for FastConvert, three possible upgrade options were considered. The first was a new conventional panel, which would have allowed the zones to be separated out and additional zones created. However, this would have required extra cabling and left the school with a conventional system limited to only being able to report zonal fire and fault information.

The second option was a full re-cabling of the system. That was ruled out due to budget as it would have added an estimated £10,000 in materials and additional labour, along with far greater disruption and a longer installation timescale.

The third opportunity was to convert the remaining six zones into loops, which would have added around one week to the installation time for two engineers, plus additional cabling, materials and disruption vat an estimated extra cost of £3,000-£4,000.

Loop-based system

FastConvert was the only option that avoided all three drawbacks at once: reusing the existing wiring, delivering a genuine loop-based addressable system rather than a conventional one and doing all of that without the extra cost, labour or disruption. This made it the obvious choice for the school.

By using the old system’s wiring, FastConvert quickly and easily upgraded the school’s legacy conventional system into a powerful open protocol CAST addressable system capable of lockdown alert functionality, Internet connectivity and accommodating C-TEC’s CAST-PRO false alarm resistant combined fire detection and alarm devices.

In order to achieve this, two radials were combined into a single loop with a dedicated two-loop panel installed for FastConvert.

Reduced installation time

Wayne Riley, managing director of W R Fire & Security, explained: “We are very impressed with FastConvert. It’s extremely innovative in terms of what it can do. Against a full re-wire, which would have added around £10,000 to the job, or converting the remaining zones into loops, which would have cost an extra £3,000-£4,000 and a week’s worth of extra labour for two engineers, FastConvert was the clear winner. It massively reduced installation time, site disruption and labour costs and saved us approximately £3,500 on the project.”

Riley added: “We also really like the new CAST-PRO devices. They have the sounder/VADs and multi-sensors built into the heads so that you don’t need separate sounder bases.”

*Further information is available online at www.c-tec.com