Fire Side Chat: Inside Tips on CO Detection Help Installers Breathe Easier

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With placement in mind, those who specialize in fire protection know that the most critical time of the day for the occupants of a home is in the evening hours when family members are asleep. Safety and crime prevention practitioners therefore advise their clients to close their bedroom doors during this period to help assure that the smoke from a fire does not easily and quickly incapacitate the occupants.

Although this procedure may help initially to preserve the lives of a sleeping family by isolating them from smoke, it does not generally work where CO is concerned. This is because the particulates associated with CO are many times smaller than that of common, ordinary smoke. For this reason, it is highly advisable that the installer place CO detectors in each bedroom area to assure early detection. There are also areas in the home to avoid. For a somewhat extensive list of both, see the sidebar in the March issue of the magazine.

The most common physical mounting locations for CO detectors are the walls and ceilings. These are ideal mounting locations, says Andrei Andreev, director MIS at Electronic Control Systems LLC (ECS). This is because CO is lighter than air. “CO molecular weight is 28. Twelve mols are contributed by carbon and 16 are contributed by oxygen,” Andreev says. This means CO will rise, which is why detectors should be installed in the ceiling or wall.

To determine which is required for a particular CO device — and to find out the specifics on mounting heights and the like — always refer to the manufacturer’s installation instructions.

It is important that installers thoroughly size up an installation before they begin work. It is always good to make a small blueprint of the home. For example, a floor-by-floor blueprint can show the placement of each device as well as possible sources of CO. This will enable installers to quickly identify the best possible locations for each detector.

System Provides Case Study
For the sake of illustration, we will use a system-type CO detection system: the UltraGuard, manufactured by ECS of Greenwich, Conn. Although the number of CO detectors this system will accommodate is limitless, the control itself provides four zones of protection. A similar arrangement could be employed with a common, ordinary alarm panel, but ECS’ panel is specifically designed and listed for this task.

This system not only has the ability to sound a local alarm, but also reports that alarm to a central monitoring station. Incredibly, this system has the ability to switch off the source of CO, which in a home environment is quite often the heating plant or furnace.

A four-conductor cable is required from the central head-end to the first CO detector in each zone. When more than one device is placed on a zone, a five-or six-conductor cable is required between subsequent detectors.

The installer — Matt Waite, technician for Abbott Fire & Security Inc. in Canton, Ohio — used an 18-gauge, 4-conductor fire power limited (FPL) cable (fire wire). “I used FPL cable because CO detection is a life-safety issue. It deserves the same installation consideration that is used when installing a fire alarm system,” says Waite.

The technician began the physical installation by first determining the mounting locations in the home. The
maker of the example system (ECS) specifies that their CO detectors be installed either on the ceiling or wall. When installing on the wall, ECS specifies a mounting height of 5-to-6 feet from the floor to the top of the detector.

Before mounting any detectors, however, the installer ran the FPL cable between each CO detector location and the master control unit, which will accommodate up to four CO zones.

In this installation, the head-end unit was placed in the basement next to the electrical service entrance panel (see photos), which is also near the furnace. Although the system contains an internal horn to warn of CO, Waite connected it to the burglar alarm panel already in place in the home.

In this particular system, all connections are made using plug-in assemblies that will accommodate wire gauges from 22 to 14 AWG (American Wire Gauge).

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Detectors Can Be Easily Integrated

The ability to integrate the control panel with a home’s alarm system and heating plant provides the technician with the ability to service the client’s needs well beyond the capability of a common, ordinary single-station CO device. By this means, every CO detector in the house can be made to provide a house-wide alert as well as report an elevated CO level to a central monitoring station for immediate action.

Integration with the existing alarm system was achieved using a four-conductor, 18-gauge FPL cable. “Two of the wires are for CO alarm while the other two are used to signal a trouble [supervisory] condition in the CO system,” says Waite.

Using an electrician, Waite was able to interface the CO system to the homeowner’s furnace. Thus, when an elevated level of CO is detected, the system will also kill the furnace, which will probably be the source of CO in the home.

For additional information on CO detection and the UltraGuard system, visit www.ecsultraguard.com.

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About the Author

Shane Clary, SSI Contributor

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Shane Clary, Ph.D., is Security Sales & Integration’s “Fire Side Chat” columnist. He has more than 37 years of security and fire alarm industry experience. He serves on a number of NFPA technical committees, and is vice president of Codes and Standards Compliance for Pancheco, Calif.-based Bay Alarm Co.