Engelhart Hall is a 10-story apartment building with underground parking that houses over 250 apartments for Northwestern’s graduate students and their families. The purpose of the project was to replace the existing limited fire alarm system with a new addressable system that would monitor all rooms in the building. The scope of the project included layouts of all initiating and notification devices as required per room type, new fire alarm risers to serve each floor’s NAC panel, a new fire-rated enclosure to house the fire alarm control panel and related equipment, and the demolition of the existing fire alarm equipment after the installation of new.
MEPIS surveyed the building to determine the best conduit and raceway routings through the rooms and identified the best placement of device locations. The new fire-rated room was designed with architectural and mechanical support. An added difficulty came when a load analysis was performed on the emergency system, determining that the existing 30KVA transformer serving the life safety system would be overloaded with the additional load, so designs were made for a new 45KVA transformer with new distribution panelboard to serve both the existing life safety riser and the new fire alarm riser. Construction administration services were also provided.
