NFPA Journal - January/February 2018 - 35

CODES, STANDARDS,
AND COMPLIANCE

NFPA 72

Fire alarms, signaling, and
emergency communication

Understanding private
mode notification
for health care facilities
By Wayne Moore

magine a hospital filled
with patients in weakened conditions. Then
imagine every patient
room equipped with
public fire alarm notification appliances. When an alarm occurred, those
devices would sound in patient rooms
at close to 85 decibels. High-candela
strobes might begin flashing. Imagine
the fear or agitation you might experience if all this was going on and you
couldn't get out of bed. Imagine ambulatory patients who, not knowing what
else to do, try to leave the floor or
area with no knowledge of where the
alarm occurred and could be moving
toward a less safe location. What
about the nursery filled with newborns, or operating rooms with active
surgeries taking place? It's easy to see
that the misapplication of notification
appliances in a health care occupancy
could be life threatening rather than
life saving.
Even so, we find engineers designing
fire alarm systems with notification
appliances not only throughout the corridors but in every patient room. When
asked why they design such inappropriate systems, they respond that if they
don't include notification appliances
everywhere, the authority having jurisdiction (AHJ) will not approve the
installation.
This misperception stems from confusion over which type of notification
to include. The 2016 edition of NFPA
72®, National Fire Alarm and Signaling
Code, states that the purpose of notification appliances is to provide stimuli

I

for initiating emergency action and provide information to users, emergency
response personnel, and occupants. Two
modes of signaling are allowed by the
code: public mode, which is the most
common, and private mode.
The definition of public mode is
obvious, in that everyone in the area
or building must be notified of the
alarm. The code also requires that the
notification appliances meet a specific sound level to be heard clearly
throughout a building. To do that,
the code requires sound levels of at
least 15 dB above the average ambient
or 5 dB above the maximum sound
level having a duration of at least 60
seconds, whichever is greater, with
additional special requirements for
how to measure those levels.

When asked why
they design such
inappropriate systems,
the engineers respond
that if they don't
include notification
appliances everywhere,
the authority having
jurisdiction will not
approve the installation.

By contrast, private mode is less
well known and not well understood.
Private mode provides notification,
according to the code, "only to those
persons directly concerned with the
implementation of emergency action
or procedures in the building or area
protected by the fire alarm system."
Based on this definition, when using
private mode signaling we are not
notifying everyone in the area or in
the building of the alarm. Additionally, the code allows reduced sound
levels for private mode signaling with
the same sound level measurement
techniques.
N F PA . O R G / J O U R N A L * NFPA JOURNAL

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - January/February 2018
