A case study of the installation of a new access control, intruder alarm and fire alarm system for a school in Reading, Berkshire.
St John’s CE (Aided) is a multi-faith Church of England Primary School. To expand its capacity the school has recently seen a major refurbishment, and a new building has been added to the site. To meet deadlines, work on the existing building had to begin during term time; contractors were working overnight and at weekends. Each weekday, the school had to be in a safe condition to welcome its pupils. The fire, security and communication systems installer PEL Services says that it worked with the main contractor and the school to ensure all deadlines were met and interruption to the school day was minimised.
PEL designed, installed and a commissioned site wide security and fire alarm systems at St John’s, covering the new and existing school buildings besides the onsite church.
A British-made Paxton proximity access control system was chosen by the installer and fitted to the school and church’s main entrances. The system was chosen as it has been designed for external use and is a standalone product for small to medium sized applications, the installers say. As is standard practice, the access control has been integrated with the fire alarm to ensure the magnetic door locks are released when the fire alarms system is activated for building evacuation.
Also integrated with the fire alarm system is a Texecom intruder alarm system featuring 140 devices in total, including Dual tech movement detectors and magnetic door contacts. The fire alarm system features 150 Apollo addressable devices controlled by two Advanced Electronics fire panels, one covering the existing school and Church and the other the new school building. The panels have been networked by PEL to form one site-wide system.
Fire and intruder alarms are remotely monitored by a DualCom Digital Communicator, installed by PEL. The DualCom Digital Communicator utilises dual signalling, wherein the alarm system communicates with a monitoring station using both wired (telephone) and wireless (GPRS/GSM) communications for increased reliability to send a signal from the school premises to the Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC). Visit www.pel.co.uk.
