North Road Academy, an Islamic primary school in Stoke-on-Trent, has upgraded its life safety system by converting its legacy conventional fire detection wiring into an addressable loop using C-TEC's FastConvert zone converter, rather than replacing the system outright. Specialist electrical contractor W R Fire & Security carried out the work and estimates the approach saved around £3,500 on the project.
The school had initially considered a complete replacement of its fire system. Following a site survey, W R Fire & Security identified scope to retain the existing conventional infrastructure and convert it instead.
Three upgrade routes weighed
Before selecting FastConvert, the contractor assessed three alternatives:
- A new conventional panel. This would have allowed the zones to be separated and additional zones created, but it required extra cabling and would still have left the school with a conventional system able to report only zonal fire and fault information.
- A full re-cable. Ruled out on budget grounds, since it would have added an estimated £10,000 in materials and additional labour, along with substantially greater disruption and a longer installation timetable.
- Converting the remaining six zones into loops. This would have added roughly a week of work for two engineers, plus additional cabling and materials, at an estimated extra cost of £3,000 to £4,000.
Reusing the existing wiring
According to C-TEC, FastConvert was 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. Two radials were combined into a single loop, with a dedicated two-loop panel installed for FastConvert.
The result is an open-protocol CAST addressable system. The company says it is capable of lockdown alert functionality and internet connectivity, and can accommodate C-TEC's CAST-PRO combined fire detection and alarm devices, which are described as false-alarm resistant. The CAST-PRO heads integrate sounders or visual alarm devices together with multi-sensors, so separate sounder bases are not needed.
Contractor's assessment
Wayne Riley, managing director of W R Fire & Security, said the team was impressed by how innovative the converter is in what it can do. Measured against a full rewire that would have added about £10,000 to the job, or converting the remaining zones into loops at an extra £3,000 to £4,000 plus a week's additional labour for two engineers, FastConvert was the clear winner, he said. It substantially reduced installation time, site disruption and labour costs, and saved approximately £3,500 on the project.
Riley added that the contractor rates the new CAST-PRO devices highly, considering them superior to other manufacturers' products because the sounder/VADs and multi-sensors are built into the heads, removing the need for separate sounder bases.