A friend has asked me to help solve a problem with linked smoke detectors in a small office, which was converted from a cowshed in the late 90s. When the detectors are turned-on they immediately trigger. They want me to replace them with stand-alone battery powered detectors but ISTR that this is not permitted - can anyone point me at the relevant regs?
Talk to your insurance company - it may be a requirement, and you could also talk to the fire officer at your local fire station. And you get trustworthy advice and for free.
Have you left them long enough to charge up? If you've got the sort with a big stack of supercaps instead of batteries they sometimes take quite a while to satisfy themselves they're working.
Oh, and the obvious - have you wired them up right?
Have any of them been replaced recently? We had a problem where 2 different models were linked - the linking signals were incompatible, so they triggered continuously.
A
The regs are probably covered in BS5839, of which I only have part 6 (dwellings) and would not apply to an office. You may find a copy of the full regs at the library.
If the office conversion was done with PP and the interconnected smokes were what was required at the time then you might be better off trying to locate and fix the fault on the existing alarms. It could be something as simple as one faulty detector.
And just to be sure, are we are talking about simple mains interconnected smoke alarms and not a fire alarm system with a control panel?
They were installed a long time ago, not by me
Hard to get solid info - I'm tempted just to replace the whole set because they're probably getting-on for 15 years old and it's starting to feel like one of those favours that can become tedious - replacing 5 or 6 detectors could be faster than trying to fault-find
Yes, it's 5 or 6 linked alarms and there isn't a fire panel. The original work had PP so I think I'll just change the lot for equivalent mains linked alarms ... any suggestions for where to buy at a sensible price? (one heat detector will be required for a small room with a kettle and a toaster)
Well I am a lazy bastard so I would buy the same make/model if possible. That way I could just swap the heads and not bother with any wiring or patress changes. Just shop around.
I would also take the old heads off one by one to see if you can identify a particular detector that is causing the problem and eliminate the possiblilty of a fixed wiring problem that you would then have to deal with (although that is possible with rf bases).
As the heads were installed in the late 90s then they have probably passed their "swap by date" and would need swapping anyway.
Cheers
Well - the obvious is to disconnect them one at a time until the problem goes away...
Most smoke detectors only have a 10 year life anyway, so they should all be replaced by the sounds of it.
I wonder which bits they're expecting to degrade - the Americium has a half-life of over 400 years, so it's not likely to be that.
I had a look yesterday - there are 4 of one type and 1 each of 2 others! I can feel a trip to TLC coming on.
Capacitors, a build up of clag in the sensor...
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