Are You Thinking About Elevator Upgrades?

Posted by Randy Brown on Jan 25, 2011 in Fire Safety | 0 comments

Don’t forget about your fire alarm system when you are upgrading your elevators. The new elevator code requires signals from the fire alarm system in a very specific way. In most cases you will need to upgrade your fire alarm system as well.

Old Codes & Elevator Homing

In the old days we could just capture the elevator on any fire alarm and bring it down to the main floor. 

This prevented people from using the elevators in a fire alarm situation. There have been many documented cases of people taking the elevator to the fire floor. A woman died in Calgary not so many years ago when she took the elevator to the main floor where the fire was raging.

Then the code got more complicated so that if the alarm came from the main floor we had to send the elevator to an alternate floor. Plus they wanted another set of signals if the alarm came from the elevator shaft or hoistway.

New Codes & Elevator Homing

Recently there has been a change in thinking that elevators may in fact help evacuate buildings faster than people using the stairs. They only want the elevators taken out of service if the fire is in fact around the elevator itself.

In order to accomplish that, things have gotten way more complicated. Now the signals come from the detectors in the elevator lobbies only. 

In the case of a detector in an elevator lobby (other than the main floor) the elevator automatically homes to the main floor. If the smoke is detected on the main floor (elevator lobby only) then the elevator is sent to an alternate floor (usually the 2nd or Basement level).

Detectors are also installed in the elevator machine room and the top of the elevator shaft. Signals from these devices will send the elevator in to a different type of homing mode. If the elevator machine room is located on the main floor, then there may be the need for another different signal.

On other alarms such as somebody activating a pull station or a sprinkler goes off, no signals are to be sent to the elevator equipment. This leaves them functioning to assist in the overall evacuation of the building.

As you can imagine, this level of complexity is almost impossible to achieve with a conventional fire alarm system. With an addressable fire alarm system the project is relatively simple. The different signals are sent through simple programming.

Please click here if you would like to see a sample Elevator Upgrade Specification as written by Garry Bambrough of Bambrough & Associates Elevator Consultants.

Fahrenheit 451 has completed many fire alarm upgrades and has worked with most elevator contractors in Calgary.