Goodwin House Bailey’s Crossroads
Falls Church, Virginia

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Advanced Life Safety System Connects & Protects
Growing Assisted Living Complex
Goodwin House Bailey’s Crossroads, an upscale, urban residential/healthcare facility located in Falls Church, Virginia, consists of a 360,000 square foot, 12-floor tower where more than 350 retirees conduct their daily lives. ”

One floor is used for health care and another one for assisted living. The other nine are used for independent living with one floor used as a common area,” said Director of Environmental Services Jim Colston with Goodwin House Bailey’s Crossroads.

The high-rise tower was recently joined by a newly-constructed Health and Wellness Center. Plus a new 15-story tower with 106 additional condominium-style apartments and room for more Goodwin House Bailey’s Crossroads offices will soon break ground. Once construction is complete, all three structures will interconnect, providing residents and employees the convenience of ready access.

Given the nature of this community and its new campus-style environment, fire protection and life safety were a major concern of its management.

“Because we’re adding two new buildings that require a fire alarm in them, we decided it would be best if all three fire alarm systems were able to talk to each other,” added Colston.

Desiring an integrated solution that ties all three structures together, Goodwin House management chose the E3 Series® Expandable Emergency Evacuation system, manufactured by Gamewell-FCI, designed by Alarm Tech Solutions, LLC of Severn, Maryland and installed by Freestate Electrical Construction of Beltsville, Maryland.

Installation Triumphs
Installation of the new fire and life safety system began with the existing 12-story tower. By way of digital signal technology for the SLC (signaling line circuit), Alarm Tech was able to utilize the existing metallic wire installed throughout the building, saving time and money while preventing destruction of a beautiful facility.

“The way we installed the E3 Series system resulted in no down time in protection and virtually no cutting, patching and painting, which would have been a significant cost to Goodwin House Bailey’s Crossroads,” said Marty Smith, General Manager with Alarm Tech Solutions.

The biggest hurdle came in the transition of old to new in terms of alarm initiating and fire control. According to Jennings, the older system was programmed to perform a selective evacuation sequence. It was necessary to assure this sequence occurred regardless of whether an alarm originated on the new or existing system.

All alarm output functions, followed by the alarm inputs, were transitioned on a floor-by-floor basis.

“The acceptance test took place over the course of several days, but we limited the sounding of speakers to prescheduled times. Several of our techs worked alongside the Goodwin House Bailey’s Crossroads engineering staff to coordinate all tests and allow us access to the apartments,” said Smith.

Technological Remedy
When the final nail is driven into the yet-to-be constructed 15-story expansion, Goodwin House Bailey’s Crossroads E3 Series system will serve the fire alarm and life safety needs all three structures simultaneously.

“The fire alarm systems in all of these buildings have to communicate together. For the safety of these residents, we need to be able to quickly determine the source of an incident in any of these buildings,” said Colston.

The scalability offered by the E3 Series enable it to mold to the specific fire protection needs of each facility. The system will support up to 64 nodes, carrying 2 to 128 signaling line circuits, each one accommodating up to 159 devices and 159 modules.

From firefighter phones to elevator control, detection to fire control, the E3 Series is the only system of its kind to integrate them all over a single twisted-pair cable between nodes and even control panels. Less wire equates to reduced labor and material expenses.

“Goodwin House Bailey’s Crossroad’s system features smoke control, stair pressurization, and exhaust and monitoring of the gas detection system,” said Smith.

The 12-story tower’s system includes full fan control with five separate smoke zones on a typical floor, utilizing fans and dampers to exhaust the fire floor and pressurize the floor above and floor below. In addition, magnetic door holders were utilized to isolate fire zones on each floor.

Voice evacuation with special messaging is part of the facility’s evacuation plan. True peer-to-peer, token ring passing network technology allows all messaging to be housed within each individual node. While communicating as one network, each segment operates independently. If one portion of the system is destroyed, the remaining segments continue to operate properly, delivering precise audio instructions.

Looking Ahead
Recently extended to encompass the new Health and Wellness Center, the Goodwin House Bailey’s Crossroads system is planned to expand again into a 15-story tower yet to come. The E3 Series’ exclusive module design and two-wire construction provide the means for easy system expansion.

“The capacity of this system to expand in any direction was one of the main reasons it was chosen for this job,” said Smith. “We’ve used the E3 products on many other types of jobs and I just can’t think of anything this system couldn’t do for Goodwin House.”