Switch Room HVAC & Fire Protection Upgrades

This project included the installation of three new CRACs and three new condensers—one set a new install, and the other two replacements. Phasing began with the install of the new CRAC and condenser, and was followed by the replacement of the existing CRACs and condensers one at a time. The purpose of installing the new set first was to add redundancy to a room that had reliability issues with the existing units. The new set was integrated into the existing BAS, which was modified to accommodate continuous cooling in a fire event.

In addition to the HVAC upgrades, a major portion of this project was the fire suppression scope which included the addition of clean agent to allow for continuous cooling, and replacement of an existing fire alarm control panel with a new Fike Cheetah Xi panel. The complicated part of this work was maintaining fire protection for the existing building while changing out existing obsolete clean agent system detection and controls for compatibility with the new Cheetah Xi panel. This was accomplished by migrating one fire zone at a time and maintaining a 24 hour fire watch. After the entire system was migrated to the new Cheetah Xi panel, we completed functional performance testing of all 200+ devices and cross zone detection to verify proper function.