What are some things for commercial businesses to consider when installing smoke detectors?
Well, every business is unique. Your business has specific needs and liabilities, such that you need to ask certain questions and then find the right answers.
How Many Smoke Detectors Does Your Building Require?
For instance, how many smoke detectors does your business need? And where should they be installed? If your building has different levels, each level should have at least one smoke detector. Also, certain areas are more prone to fires, so they should definitely have smoke detectors nearby. For example, you’d want to make sure your kitchen, break room containing appliances, and/or rooms with fireplaces all have smoke detectors in their vicinity.
Maximizing the Value of Your Investment
Next, if you’re buying new detectors, will they work with your current system or do you need to change/upgrade the system to make it more up-to-date?
What’s your budget? You don’t want to compromise security, but you also need to keep in mind your budget and buy equipment accordingly.
Are your smoke detectors going to be professionally installed and then monitored? What features do you think you’d need? There are things like backup batteries, voice alarms and hush buttons to consider. Additional features help improve usability.
Be in Compliance
Don’t forget there are fire regulations and codes. Your local fire department can help you figure out what you need to do in order to be in perfect compliance with those.
Finally, keep in mind there are different fire and smoke detector types, and options include devices such as heat sensors, duct smoke detectors, photoelectric alarms, and more.
If you’re not too familiar with smoke detectors and fire alarm systems but want to know more, call Life Safety Consultants at 1-888-557-0558 or email sales@lifesafetycom.com. Life Safety Consultants carries commercial fire alarms and replacement parts from brands such as Simplex, Edwards, Siemens, Notifier, Cerberus Pyrotronics and others.
