The life safety manufacturer, Hochiki Europe, has unveiled the latest in its series of roundtable discussions. A session explored the benefits and challenges that arise when using multi-sensor detectors. The roundtable was held digitally and is now freely available online.
The panel, of an installer, engineer and others in life safety, was completed by Will Lloyd from the Fire Industry Association (FIA). The discussion covered multi-sensors, including discrepancies with product certification, best practice for testing and maintenance, and barriers to correct usage and installation. Highlights from the roundtable are available on YouTube, providing some key takeaways for installers, engineers, end users, or anyone interested in the trends. The roundtable comprised:
Paul Adams, Marketing Manager, Hochiki Europe, (Chair)
Terry Hailes, Managing Director, Cornerstone Fire
Paul Gatens, Technical Sales and Support Specialist, Detectortesters
Will Lloyd, Technical Manager, Fire Industry Association; and
Martin Green, Regional Sales Manager, and Neil Eves, Systems Manager, Hochiki Europe.
Discussions covered the importance of false alarm reduction. A benefit of multi-sensor devices is their ability to reduce such issues and studies have proven that advanced multi-sensors can outperform more basic models in this area. Neil Eves, Systems Manager at Hochiki Europe said: “For facilities managers, investing in intelligent multi-sensor devices provides the long-term benefit of reducing false alarm events and operational costs, which cost the tax payer around £1 billion per year.
“However, ensuring absolute reliability and a completely failproof device is even more critical as there are many elements at play which can result in false alarms. Hochiki Europe’s ACD-EN offers total piece of mind thanks to its highly sophisticated algorithm which continually monitors readings from the environment from the moment of installation.”
The panel also discussed certification of multi-sensor products and a growing requirement for devices to incorporate CO detection into their programming to better calculate the presence of a real fire.
Neil added: “Hochiki’s ACD-EN devices monitor for levels of CO that are emitted during the early stages of a fire – even before visible smoke and heat are produced, helping reduce false alarms, while providing an early indicator of an emergency situation. Plus, the Reduced False Alarm function (+RFA) means the sensor automatically adjusts the sensitivity of the sensing element over time and continually learns from its environment to further prohibit activation during a non-event. This means the sensor will always be as sensitive as it needs to be, and was an important point of discussion during the roundtable.”
Hochiki Europe’s next roundtable is being released in May 2021, and will focus on life safety in care homes. You can watch the full roundtable using the links below.
YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE00J3w9gSYpAccXtxkjVA1ehSw_q4Z39
Part 1: https://youtu.be/nQYS7Z83Ge0
Part 2: https://youtu.be/Uf7qIi1lh4I
Part 3: https://youtu.be/yvW8k9InkkM
Part 4: https://youtu.be/DQTcJejczSQ
