 Aloha and again welcome this week to condo insider Hawaii show about association living mostly about condominiums although we talk occasionally about homeowner associations and other type of common interest living anyway one of the big topics in the last seven ten days all over the news everywhere we go has been fire and life safety issues and condominiums certainly been a lot to report about that so I thought it might be interesting over the next two or three weeks to talk about life safety and fire suppression systems and things you can do what the law is and the requirements with regard to those items today I'm very blessed to have with this Amir Borochov from Ohana control systems whose company specializes in fire control systems in part so welcome to the show Amir thank you and I'd like to say have you introduced yourself to our watchers and tell them a little about yourself well I've been in the business since 2002 actually 2001 was when it all came to me right after 9-11 I wanted to get into security and we started Ohana control systems it was actually originally Ohana international enterprises which was started in 1991 and we got into it from the access control and then we got into the parking revenue control and sure enough it brought us into CCTV and the big one was fire alarm which we brought into the company in 2009 and that's when we renamed the company to Ohana control systems so you're a broad based company besides just fire alarm systems you have a lot of other types of products and services we are electrical contractors we're also general contractors we just were part of the big renovation work at Miley Skycourt we did everything from the ground all the way up to the 44th floor in the room renovations to the fire alarm system we did everything in the building over there basically well you know one of the things that has been brought to bear is you know there's been a major fire at a condominium here in Hawaii recently and issue comes up about the fire alarm system and and notifying people that there is an incident going on in the building correct tell us what the current code is for residential condominiums for a fire alarm system current code I know we may have some older buildings that don't meet the current code but kind of bring us up to date what the current code is current code the big the big one is requiring that people get notified and have at least a 75 decibel reading at pillow height with a speaker basically telling people to wake up or attention attention please there's been a fire reported please exit the building and the back in the days you just have a bell or a horn in the hallway in the common area hallway today it has to be inside your unit and it has to be able to talk to you so you can get out also the current code requires that there be smoke detectors in the common area hallways to get people to get out and usually it's within about 40 feet between each smoke detector in an enclosed area in an open area it might be a heat detector so the two bedroom apartment for example a condominium they would need to basically you would have to have at least 75 dBs at pillow in both bedrooms and 15 above ambient in the rest of the common areas of the department or the condo so if the unit is you close all your doors and we do a sound test and we don't get that 75 decibels at pillow it becomes a requirement that we put the speaker inside and it got even bigger this year where the requirement is the hundred five hundred twenty Hertz requirement which is low frequency so people who are inebriated or old or little children who can't hear the typical speaker with this 520 Hertz they'll be able to hear it so kind of summarized right here you're saying correct me if I'm wrong that you would have to have theoretically a two bedroom apartment two alarms and it would have a speaker as mandatory will be two speakers inside the unit and in the outside in the common area always you would have speaker strobes and smoke detectors now smoke alarms are requirement by law for at the condo owners we generally it's a battery operated or it's it's hardwired but it doesn't notify downstairs basically at the management office that your smoke detector went off because you burnt a toast but once the smoke blows out into the common area always it'll let everybody know and it'll trigger the alarm to go off and the speakers will sound and say attention please vacate the building now the attention please is that like a pre-recorded the system does it or yes it doesn't depend on someone being in the office there is a pre-recorded message and generally what would happen is the manager or the security guard will sound saying this may have been an accident a mistake disregard or they'll say please evacuate while the system is still ringing so you're still gonna have the whip and sound and you're gonna have the attention please and usually it's in threes and then it keeps on telling people to evacuate so if you were to retrofit an existing building an older building you're gonna need to put these speakers in each apartment correct maybe two if it's a two bedroom apartment correct and then in the hallway the common area you're gonna have a smoke alarm you're gonna have speaker and a strobe light you're gonna have a speaker strobe and smoke detectors along the hallway as well yes and the speaker kind of is the annunciator for the alarm like you know as we hear for civil defense or something else so it's kind of beep beep beep and attention time to leave the building whatever it says you know correct you know so that's what the current requirements are correct and even inside during with the current requirement even in your electrical rooms in your storage areas in your parking areas you still got to have the same items the speakers the smoke detectors inside any place where people might be inside you have to have some kind of notification so it's it's very critical that people understand that you know the code is the code but the code is the evaluation of what is one life worth is it better to do it now and get it out of the way and or not do it at all and and it's required we're gonna come back in a minute to like the older buildings what they have now but it seems to me when you have an alarm system like that there's a lot more moving parts yeah it's gotta be maintained I guess is what I'm trying to say absolutely how does that work when you sign contracts to maintain it or the requirements how often you check it or how does that all work so generally with the fire alarm systems the state requires that you inspect it at least once a year and then you get it certified that it passed now as far as the maintenance is concerned it's definitely recommended because the longer the better you maintain it the longer the system will live if you don't maintain it properly you're gonna have a failing system so that's big the biggest hurdle that we deal with as far as our service is concerned is we're dealing with a lot of old systems and we're dealing with the code based on when the system was there and everybody is assuming that it's grandfathered in so we have to keep on maintaining it until they're ready to upgrade and at that point we will help them with the upgrade well let's just say you're older building you wanted to retrofit your fire alarm system kind of one of the steps you go through yeah I guess it's a design building permit installation maybe inspection what are what are the steps you go through to put a new generally we when most times the buildings will come to us and say we're interested in upgrading our fire alarm or our old fire alarm system is failing it's going into alarm a lot which we have that happen a lot and then what we'll do is say okay fine we'll give you an estimate but what we normally do as far where Ohana is concerned we'll go and do a pretest of our own and figure out exactly how many speakers they need and what the building is going to need to pass the final acceptance with the fire department so at that point we'll submit them the proposal they'll come back and say okay we chose you there is five or six fire alarm companies in in Honolulu or more maybe and at that point that's it assigned the contract we will then go and submit and give it to our engineers and have them design the fire alarm system usually it's by an electrical engineer and then once that goes then we submit it for permitting now we can submit it either through third-party review or we'll go straight to the Department of Planning and Permitting and submit it at that point goes to plan review and then it goes to the fire department for them to stamp it now keep in mind that the majority of the time they'll stamp it but it still has to pass final acceptance so if the engineer missed something in the design and they do the final acceptance if something fails or something went missing your contractor still has to come in and make it right and it's happened to us a few times so in general at that point once you get the permit we will start the installation our recommendation for all their buildings is keep the old system running while we're putting in the new system so we're going to run all new wiring all no electrical everything goes from zero we don't like to use anything of the existing we try to stay away from that so that's just once you start installation they really have the old system functioning and the new system and then as a part of your contract you take out the old system in the old boxes and once once we get final approval from the fire marshal then he says everything went great we come back and demo the old system and do whatever needs to be done to give them exactly what they what we promised them so that's what I understand on the building code that if in fact you start to retrofit you know you have to commit the new building code correct and if we did a building code that means you're going to have these speakers in the apartment absolutely you get pushed back from owner saying I don't want to speak in my apartment every single time there hasn't been a time where we haven't had an owner after we did the installation rip the speaker off and because when we're doing testing it's loud and it has to be loud but they'll take it off they'll cut off the wire they'll do whatever and I say we didn't do anything but what they don't realize with the new systems we know exactly which unit number did what it did because we can trace the wire where it went to so a lot of people feel like why do we have to do this my building is grandfathered in or I don't need to hear this or I don't want that speaker right here because it's ugly to my unit and a lot of people don't realize that it's not us or even the the property management company or even your resident manager that's doing this it's code requirement and it's for your life and we try to keep on reiterating it what is one way for it you may not know the answer is what are the boards doing they have an owner who cuts off the wires and says I don't want but eventually I guess they turn it over to the lawyer write up letters or whatever basically I mean it I just went through a board meeting last week and I had people yelling well you're not running conduit in my unit and you're not doing this but part of our job as far as the contractor is concerned is to try to appease them and make them feel as comfortable as they can so we're not you know dealing with ugly aesthetics in their units I'm assuming if you're running some new wires it's not big wiring no you're using some kind of softener cover well generally we try to come in from the common area hallway and we try to just drill into the build into the unit and just mount a speaker right there if we can if we can't we'll put it in a wire mold we'll put it somewhere we can hide the wire either in the socket or inside the walls if it's possible one of the projects we just completed we you won't even see one conduit because everything was run inside the walls you know when we are able to do that we will you know in other installations from other kinds of manufacturers or other customers I mean other dealers in this town they just run this ugly silver pipe down their hallways and all they do is paint it and yeah it is a big eyesore yeah I think that's probably one of the issues of cost well you want to look nice or you don't want it to look yeah but it's a fair to say in summary you have speakers in the units yes they will maintain their own battery operated smoke alarm in the units yeah and the common areas will have the speaker the strobe light and the smoke detector and if it's in a not sprinkled building you gotta have a pole station by every staircase emergency pole station where you're pulling the pole station to activate the fire alarm if it's sprinkled you don't have that and if it's sprinkled the new law says that you can as long as it's 24-hour security and they can pull the pole station you only need one pole station I got it but if it's not 24-hour security you need pole station on every floor by every exit this is quite interesting but we're gonna take a one minute break and come back and talk a little bit about some of the older buildings so we'll be right back in a minute to sister power I'm your host Sharon Thomas Yarbrough where we motivate educate and power and inspire we are live here every other Thursday at 4 p.m. and we welcome you to join us here at sister power aloha and thank you welcome back to condo insider we're here with my friend Amir Borochov from ohana control systems talking about the fire code and fire alarm systems we'll talk about more about fire protection in a moment but I guess you know you talk about the fire code you gave us I'm gonna call it the short version of it very short version yeah how big is the fire code the fire code consists of maybe about 10,000 pages they relate to every from the building code one book refers to the building code which refers to the NFPA 72 which refers to the NFPA NFP 1 2012 right now up until last year where they were in the 2006 version so it keeps on growing there's about 10,000 pages to read through some pertaining to commercial buildings to low-rise to high-rise to hotels everybody has their own requirements but you know one of the things we were saying we kind of got into you go out and design and you got to get a bid and approval and then you go and a submit for a building permit it goes to the various departments including the fire department and comes back where you get approval for installation about how long does it take to go through the design the building permit and installation of let's say an average 150 unit building so my experience has gone from a three-week turnaround to a nine-month turnaround so that for the permit or the permit to receive the permit not from design just once we submit for permit it's taken as long as nine months and it all depends on the luck of the draw of who receives it now currently there's I think five guys at HFD plans at the planning department from the fire from Honolulu fire department there's five guys reviewing and they're reviewing hundreds of permits and keep in mind that's we're just talking about completely renovations but imagine a store in Alamoana Center they have to have their fire alarm system also inspect so these guys there's five guys reviewing hundreds of permits so it's the luck of the draw sometimes we push push push and we beg plead and do whatever we need to do to get them to give us the permit sometimes it takes longer today and nowadays the good news is there's third-party reviewers so you go to a company such as Pala Khanna permits and they'll run the whole permit for you and that might be a little bit quicker maybe two months you know if you go do it on your own it might take a lot longer I used to do it on ourselves but nowadays we use a third-party review because it cuts the amount of hours that we have to spend on getting it but the key is and I always recommend this to all the condos it's better to do a design build where the contractor will guarantee that it will be approved and passed by the fire marshal then going and hiring no disrespect to any of the great designers out there a what do you call it a consultant because if the consultant forgets something then you're looking at change orders and that's something nobody likes we know the paper has been talking about one and focus on sprinkler systems I don't want to talk about sprinkler systems today but they keep referring and I'm not saying this is accurate but they're saying the buildings built before 1975 did not have to have sprinkler systems but that change let's just say that's accurate I don't think it is accurate let's just say it is accurate the code with respect to fire alarm systems may on be on different dates so you may have an older building that's after 1975 that your fire alarm systems out of date doesn't meet the building code definitely almost all the buildings that have had a fire alarm system prior to 97 are not in today's code some of the newer buildings even buildings in 2006 are not that have been built in through 2006 are not in today's building code but again they're all grandfathered in a lot of the condos they never set money aside or enough money aside for brand new fire alarm system so you know most people they're older they're living on fixed income they're looking at a huge expense 300 400,000 and there's not enough money in reserves what do they do at that point so I know it's exactly it's not it's not possible for you to tell me what it would cost but I'm just going to give you a hypothetical that maybe our viewers can kind of relate if you take a building 150 units average issues you have to deal with the retrofit the fire sprinkler alarm system what kind of range of cost you think it would be so we've gone we've done buildings with 150 units that were as low as 130,000 because they're all studios and we've gone as as high as 256 depending if it's two bedrooms you're looking at roughly a 3,000 per unit for a two bedroom unit if it's a one bedroom it might only be 1700 depending on what obstacles we're dealing with when we're seeing the building so it's it ranges so from my way I hear you talk about it it's it's like a thousand to three thousand dollars unit depending on how many bedrooms correct recognizing the basic configuration of the building and where you have to run the wires can have an impact on it yes but it's not really huge amounts of money when you consider the value of one person's life absolutely I always say one thing sprinklers save buildings smoke detectors saves lives and and the reason behind it is if the small a smoke detector goes off you have enough time and you have a speaker you have enough time to escape the building and run away where you have a sprinkler system even though the fire went it's got to be hot enough to reach the sprinkler head which will generate the water to flow by that time the smoke is already billowing out into the hallways and what we want is we want people to get out we want people to be out of the building so speakers smoke detectors it's critical in my opinion it's the most important thing for any unit for any building whether it's an open air or enclosed type of situation well certainly everybody here and everybody out there believes in public safety we want to find ways to protect the people in the building and recognizing you take these older buildings with sprinkler systems the older ones the really old ones prior to 1975 and in Hawaii they say did not have to have a sprinkler system that's true are there solutions other than sprinklers to have fire yeah there is a product called extinguish which is an aerosol type of product it's a green product it's not it's human friendly meaning it's not going to kill you it's not usually they put it in data centers because they don't want the electronics to get all destroyed with water it's very inexpensive solution still needs to be run by you still got run power to it but it will be triggered the same exact way of sprinkler head would trigger it would still trigger the same way except it doesn't cost as much you don't have to run piping all over the into the units and so on and so forth but basically it's not something that's currently being used in lieu of sprinkler systems generally being used for data centers areas where people are not in there and hypothetically we all know what the cost of sprinklers are we've heard all sorts of numbers from different people in the press which frankly I think are extremely low I would remind everybody that our governor thought that we take ten thousand dollars a classroom the air conditioning the schools and I think the bills came in at fifty or sixty thousand and you start looking at other issues like asbestos and lead paint yeah no one really knows we can all hypothesize it but just taking hypothetically this other system about what was the cost compared to that if a sprinkler system cost a hundred this would cost about thirty dollars you know so it's about seventy percent less yeah but again it's not the solution and you know I mean it is there it's available I would personally more recommend going the right way and putting in a sprinkler system but I would tell all the buildings right now all put in the brand new fire alarm system I think that's more critical than anything else because a lot of the buildings out there today their their systems are antiquated they don't have parts to repair them and when they keep on sweeping it under the rug and thinking it's you know you're gonna have a situation like what happened a couple of weeks ago where people actually died and and that that was really sad and this other system which we know isn't as good as well I don't know if that's not as good as sprinklers but it's different than sprinklers as configuration does that meet the building it does I got a look into that I you know it's it's a new product it's been around but it's not been used in lieu of sprinkler systems they've used it yes it is allowed in buildings but they've mostly uses inside data centers and how does it work so it's it's a potassium based product and what it does is potassium likes likes fire and it kills the fire right away where oxygen makes fire blow out more potassium will kill it so it's it's it's an aerosol so it sprays out it's like a dark cloud and within seconds the fire is out but it's probably worth the investigation anyway because we have some videos I'll make sure you I'll send it to you that'd be wonderful because one of the things you know we talked about fire safety systems is in older buildings they're gonna have to look at it because I don't want anyone to be hurt but there are issues that relate to that on cost and you know I always was quoted as saying I said cost per se it's all the things you get to deal with to put it in create the cost absolutely you know and there's a whole lot of hidden condition type issues that they can really run this number up and then you get into affordability yeah and and where are you gonna get the money you know and I did a small calculation and because they say there's 360 buildings that have this problem and depending on how old and all these hidden condition issues it could be close to a billion dollars oh easy there is 360 buildings there is about 1100 buildings that need to retrofit or upgrade their systems they're saying 360 it's probably true but there's a lot more than that so we're talking about two to three billion maybe five billion you know from my calculations yeah that's to include the fire alarm system you're doing the fire alarm systems and a sprinkler system they just throw on the cast iron pipes to wastewater pipes for these old buildings and then you got to do the electrical systems too because some of them can't you know a lot of buildings the electrical is antiquated you can't get parts for that too so what's your recommendation to board members about fire alarm system I would definitely if your building is old I would definitely look into upgrading I would definitely do it right now because the labor costs are not coming any lower than where they're at right now and they keep on going up and the advantage of doing it now is if something new comes up or a new requirement code comes up you're buying yourself more time to put the money away for it and that's the advantage of doing it right now right now means going to design go into planning get the contractors out there and actually I mean hopefully it's a hana control systems but anybody else and put it out there so at least you guys are ready because the the intent is life safety and that's why I look at it it's always been life safety well your company and other companies have a great reputation this is not an experience and I know you would welcome people asking for more information absolutely I want to thank you for being on the show today you very very insightful the next couple of weeks when we're talking more in detail about sprinklers and insurance and all the things that are related to safety of the residents in a building and we thank you very much for watching condo insider we're on every Thursday from three to three thirty and we hope you'll come back and visit us next week aloha