Just what were these Electricians thinking when they wired this
Fire alarm system?

By: Nick Markowitz Jr.
Fire Investigator –Electrical Contractor

I recently picked up a client who has several apartment buildings in the west suburbs of Pittsburgh Pa. area, many of them old schools converted to apartments.
As I have been working my way through the various fire systems he had installed over the years I recently came across a system that was installed by some electricians who had a total and complete disregard for following fire alarm codes.

An electrical contractor who had originally started the 3-story old school fire system with required conduit and for various reasons was taken off the job and replaced by another contractor who finished the job. The system has always worked but when I recently went to the building to inspect the system and install new batteries I was shocked to find that the 2nd Electrical contractor had installed 22# Gauge Phone wire in the conduit instead of the required 18 #-gauge red fire cable or the 14# Gauge THHN single conductor wire typically used. To make matters worse he T tapped all the connections and left the supervising resistors in the panel so there was no way to ever know if everything in the system was working properly unless it went off and was found to be not working. This very same system also passed labor and Industry inspection as well which is another story in it self.

To temporarily remedy the situation I moved the resistors out into the filed wiring to help supervise the main wiring runs, but the owner of the building knows at some point he is going to have to spend the money to pull out the phone wire and replace it with proper wire to insure code compliance and proper operation. All because L&I did not do their job and follow up and make sure the system was properly installed. Instead relying on a letter from the installing electrician verifying he did the work properly. How many times I have seen fire systems inspected by various AHJ and they never bother to open the panel and look inside. All they ever do is pull some pull stations and activate some detectors. They never verify any other part of the system for compliance. Even with the new UCC codes going into effect I still doubt the fire inspectors will ever get involved with a deep inspection of a system and check to make sure proper wiring etc is being used. When you allow the installers to make up the rules of the game the above type install is exactly what you get. How many systems are out there ticking like time bombs and nothing will ever be done about it till it is too late and the fire happens and the system never activates?

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