One of my customers in the Caribbean supplies a facility that uses wards as opposed to patient rooms. When you came through the doors to the ward you have a short hall, the nurses station, and then the open bed area consisting of 21 beds. The area alarm and zone valve box is located directly across from the nurses station in the ward hall. There is no way to install a wall between the zone valve box and the first wall outlet that is about 20' away. Since the codes appear to be written for facilities that use patient rooms does anyone have thoughts on what a facility using wards can do?  

Chris is on the right track, and without spending a lot of time doing a cut and paste from NFPA 99 Chapter 5:

There are 4 basic requirements of where the zone valve box are to be located.

#1 is to have an intervening wall between the zone valve box and the outlets

( NFPA 99 has a picture of this in the book - personally I’m not a big fan of it ).

#2 is for the zone valve box to be in the Corridor.

#3 fairly new to NFPA 99 - The zone valve box can not be in the same room as the outlets.

#4 if the zone valve box services-controls an anesthetizing location, it is to be immediately outside that location / space.

I was providing this information via voice to text sorry / if the format is a little strange.

That is correct Bob.  Zone Valves do not have any special security requirements that I know of within NFPA 99.  If they are serving a special use area such as a psych ward or prison it's a bit different, but for normal patient use it is common to see these in hallways that family members of patients walk by every day.

Thanks everyone for your helpful comments. I will advise my customer so that they can advise their customer. I love this organization and the forum!