Over the school summer holidays the T H WHITE Energy Fire and Security Division was operating at full capacity installing fire systems in five Wiltshire schools.
In total, there were four complete new systems as well as an extension to an existing system. In total over 1,300 devices were installed over the six-week break.
The equipment used included conventional addressable alarm panels with heat and smoke detection and one large system included a complete replacement with a new wireless system.
You might ask why one system was wireless and others were wired? The answer is that both solutions offer benefits. Wired solutions are traditionally seen as more resilient and require less maintenance, whereas wireless systems require battery changes every few years. There are, however, practical and capital cost advantages of using a wireless installation in certain circumstances.
In the case of the school where we installed a wireless system, the design of the building meant that retrofitting a wired fire alarm would prove very costly and so wireless offered a better practical solution to avoid running cable; it was also installed in half the time of an equivalent wired system.
Another feature of one of the new installations was the use of multiple alarm sounds to alert pupils to either a fire emergency, a safety lockdown at the school, or to signal a class change. This was achieved by using a wired, addressable fire panel.
T H WHITE has more than 25 years’ experience in installing fire and security systems and has the capability to handle projects of all types and sizes. Call us on 01380 726656 or email alarms@thwhite.co.uk for more information.
