North Road Academy, an Islamic primary school in Stoke-on-Trent, has upgraded its legacy conventional fire detection system to an addressable system using FastConvert, the conventional-to-addressable zone converter made by C-TEC. The work was carried out by specialist electrical contractor W R Fire & Security.
The school had initially considered replacing its fire system outright. After a site survey, however, the contractor identified the potential to enhance the existing conventional system by converting it to addressable operation rather than starting again.
Three options weighed before conversion
According to the project account, three alternative upgrade routes were assessed before FastConvert was chosen:
- A new conventional panel. This would have allowed the zones to be separated and additional zones to be created, but it would have required extra cabling and would have left the school with a conventional system able to report only zonal fire and fault information.
- A full re-cable. This was ruled out on budget grounds. It would have added an estimated £10,000 in materials and additional labour, along with greater disruption and a longer installation programme.
- Converting the remaining six zones into loops. This would have added around a week to the installation for two engineers, plus additional cabling, materials and disruption, at an estimated extra cost of £3,000 to £4,000.
FastConvert was described as the only option that avoided all three drawbacks at once: it reuses the existing wiring, delivers a genuine loop-based addressable system rather than a conventional one, and does so without the extra cost, labour or disruption.
From conventional wiring to a CAST loop
By using the old system's wiring, FastConvert upgraded the school's legacy conventional system into an open-protocol CAST addressable system. The resulting system is described as capable of lockdown alert functionality and internet connectivity, and able to accommodate C-TEC's CAST-PRO combined fire detection and alarm devices, which are designed to resist false alarms. To achieve this, two radials were combined into a single loop, with a dedicated two-loop panel installed for FastConvert.
Wayne Riley, managing director of W R Fire & Security, said the company was very impressed with FastConvert and considered it extremely innovative in terms of what it can do. He contrasted it with a full re-wire, which he said would have added around £10,000 to the job, or converting the remaining zones into loops, which he said would have cost an extra £3,000 to £4,000 plus a week's extra labour for two engineers. On that basis, he said, FastConvert was the clear winner, massively reducing installation time, site disruption and labour costs, and saving the project approximately £3,500.
Riley also said the company liked the new CAST-PRO devices and felt they were superior to other manufacturers' products because the sounder/VADs and multi-sensors are built into the heads, so separate sounder bases are not needed.