How does fire alarm system work? How often should fire alarm systems be tested? What should one know about maintenance and testing? People have much misconception about fire alarms and sprinkler systems.

If you involved in project and have faced these questions or would like to know more about electronic fire alarms, this article is written for you. If you want to teach your service technicians and building engineers on how inspect fire alarms or just educate them on all aspects of it.

Lets we see Fire alarms and suppression - what types of control panels may be installed in a commercial facility

Understanding Basic Fire Alarm Systems

Before we can reasonably discuss alarm systems you should know the fundamentals in order to perform emergency work & it’s important for electrical contractors to understand the basics of fire alarm systems. Many people tend to confuse the distinction between fire alarms and fire suppression systems. The modern fire alarm system is capable of detecting water flow in a sprinkler system, smoke and heat from a small flame, or an activated pull station, and reporting this information to on-site personnel to any location in the world

Fire suppression

These systems can be divided into several categories:

Fire sprinkler systems are designed to put out a fire by dousing it with water. Systems working on a total flooding principle apply an extinguishing agent to an enclosed space in order to achieve a concentration of the agent (volume percent of the agent in air) adequate to extinguish the fire.

In local application, the agent is applied directly onto a fire or into the region of a fire. There are some systems employing this technique but the most common method of local application is by manually operated wheeled or portable fire extinguishers. Fire extinguishers are generally self contained portable appliances to be manually used to fight a fire. No alarms are generated by their usage.

Fire Alarms

Alarms can also be divided into categories. It generally is four types.

An alarm system which is activated only by someone operating a Manual Call Point. Fire alarms vary in complexity and control. Fires warning (also known as Evacuations of Life safety) consist of audible and visual devices such as horns, strobes, bells, and sometimes speakers to warn occupants to evacuate the building.

Fire monitoring systems are used to notify a remote site that either an alarm has occurred of there is trouble with some part of the overall fire systems.

Automatic fire alarm system activated by heat detectors and manual call points, when pre-determined temperature is exceeded in the space; the various systems are often combined in many different designs. Fire sprinkler systems are required to be monitored if there are more than 100 sprinkler heads. Fire warning systems do not necessarily have be monitored since they are intended to warn occupants but mostly likely they will have a fire alarm transmitted to send an alarm signal to a central monitoring station.

One of the most important and frequently over look basic functions for the property manager or owner to perform is to ensure the central monitoring station has an up to date company monitoring site to call in case of emergency. Because of the nature of fire alarms which do not generate activity like a burglar alarm; these lists are often overlooked and consequently are years out of date. If the alarm company doesn’t have an up to date list they can’t notify you of a problem or disaster.