30.1 Commentary

1. Impact of False Alarms:

● False alarms disrupt business, strain fire services, and can compromise occupant safety if they become too frequent.

2. Responsibility Distribution:

● Designer: Major responsibility for limiting false alarms; must ensure system design suits the building conditions.

● Installer: Must follow the designer’s requirements and report any potential issues that might cause false alarms.

● Commissioning: Special checks are needed to identify potential false alarm issues.

● User: Responsible for managing the system to avoid false alarms and addressing any high rates of false alarms.

● Servicing Organization: Must review false alarm records and provide advice to the user to reduce false alarms.

3. Compliance and Verification:

● All parties must verify that measures to limit false alarms have been implemented.

● Systems with high rates of false alarms or inadequate management are deemed non-compliant with BS 5839.

30.2 Recommendations

The following recommendations are applicable.

1. Authority and Insurer Considerations:

● Ensure detection methods provide adequate life/property protection without excessive false alarms.

2. System Design:

● Designers must follow guidelines to minimize false alarms and document measures taken in the design certificate.

3. Installer Responsibilities:

● Inform designers, purchasers, or users of potential high false alarm rates.

4. Commissioning:

● Check for potential false alarm issues and record findings on the commissioning certificate for future review.

5. User Information:

● Designers and suppliers must provide users with information to minimize false alarms, confirmed by acceptance personnel.

6. Compliance Verification:

● Verify that the system design, installation, and commissioning consider false alarm guidelines.

7. False Alarm Investigation:

● Users should investigate and address each false alarm, which might involve system modifications or management changes.

8. Recording False Alarms:

● Users should log details of each false alarm, including date, time, location, cause, actions taken, and fire service involvement.

9. Service Visits:

● Technicians should review the false alarm record for the past 12 months, check for patterns, and log the rate of false alarms per 100 detectors per year.

10. Preliminary Investigation:

● Conduct preliminary investigations if certain thresholds are met (e.g., high false alarm rate, multiple alarms from the same source), and provide users with advice on further actions.

NOTE 1 The user needs to make historic events records available.

30 Responsibility for limitation of false alarms and unwanted fire alarm signals