Back in the olden days, when fire alarms weren’t invented, areas relied on members of the community spotting the fire, waking up everyone in the neighbourhood and working together to stop the fire. As you can imagine, this wasn’t efficient and if fires were spotted late, a lot of destruction would occur. Fire alarms nowadays detect fire instantly, giving us the most time to put out the fire with minimal damage to properties and less risk of injury.
Today, fire alarms are extremely advanced and are composed of a range of devices and equipment to make sure they’re as effective, safe, and functional as possible when it comes to early fire detection. In this article, I’ll be going over what makes up a modern fire alarm system.
Fire alarm control panels
Fire alarm panels receive information from devices and tell each component what to do, it’s known as the brain of the fire alarm system. There are two types of fire alarm panels: addressable and non-addressable. Non-addressable fire alarm control panels monitor fire detection per zone rather than per device, they will tell you what zone the fire is being detected in, but not what specific device has been triggered. Addressable fire alarm panels monitor fire detection per device, so you’ll know the specific location of the fire and which exact device has been triggered.
Detectors
There is a range of different types of fire alarm detectors, these include smoke detectors, heat detectors, beam detectors, duct detectors, and more. Smoke detectors are the most common type of detector and are what you’ll usually find in every household, it detects fires using smoke as their name suggests. Another self-explanatory one, heat detectors detect the change in temperature caused by a fire. Beam detectors are less common, they work by using a beam of light to detect smoke across large areas; they’re installed in large buildings with tall ceilings where normal smoke detectors wouldn’t be as effective at fire detection as beam detectors would. Another uncommon one, duct detectors are used to detect the movement of smoke through ductwork and within HVAC. When a fire is detected, the detector sends a signal to the fire alarm panel and alarms are set off. Air aspirating detectors can detect smoke before you can even see it, unlike normal smoke detectors, they draw air into a detection unit rather than waiting for the smoke to naturally reach them. Air aspirating detectors are used in places where if a fire breaks out, the risk is massive, such as server rooms or data centres.
Audible devices
When a fire is detected, a siren is played through sounders, letting people know to evacuate.
Visible devices
For the hard-of-hearing (HOH), visible devices like flashing LED beacon units are ideal if they’re unable to hear the siren of a fire alarm.
Call point units
If a fire is detected manually, you can report it at call point units, which you break the glass of and activate. This triggers the fire alarm. And those were the necessities of a fire alarm system, you’ll also need fire extinguishers, fire blankets, fire exit signs, and plenty more. All of which you can find online at The Safety Centre.
Content provided by Piranha Solutions
