Maintaining power is one of the foundations of any fire/life-safety system. Find out the codes, standards and calculations you need to know to make sure batteries deliver when needed.
A Q&A session addresses code compliance challenges associated with projected beam smoke detectors, annunciators and keypads.
Al Colombo addresses comments prompted by the September's column, "Finding Faults in Fire Systems."
Al Colombo discusses the simple -- yet vital -- steps to better ladder safety.
Of all the troubles that fire alarm technicians are likely to encounter, ground-faults are one of the most difficult to locate and fix. When a ground-fault does occur in a fire alarm system, any number of things can take place.
An important part of what makes fire/life-safety systems easy to sell is that municipal and county governments, by way of sanctioned building departments and knowledgeable inspectors, have established laws or ordinances mandating their installation and maintenance ...
Fire alarm installation entails more than merely placing smoke detectors in strategic areas of a building. Technicians are often required to interface fire alarm systems with other building subsystems.
Veteran installers will undoubtedly remember when fire alarm panels worked almost exclusively by relay technology. As technicians, we encounter relays every day in the field on alarm panel motherboards, smoke detectors, addressable heat sensors and a host of other devices.
On April 8, the FCC issued a public statement in the form of a document titled, FCC Announces Broadband Action Agenda, that in essence says whether anyone likes it or not we’re going to phase out plain old telephone service (POTS), also known as the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and in its place create an IP-switched national infrastructure.
This past December, the FCC began a legal process that if successful will lead to the demise of plain old telephone service (POTS). This has paradigm-shifting and potentially catastrophic implications for our industry.
The need for accurate, timely info has always been a problem, but recently civilian and government authorities decided it was time to do something about it.
Mass notification, a relatively new development in life safety, can be defined as "a technology that provides real-time information to groups of individuals within large buildings, campus settings, geographic regions, or entire nations."
The number of injuries and deaths due to carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning routinely increases every year as cold weather moves across the nation. The CO threat is an ever-present danger to humankind and animals. This is especially true during the winter months when it becomes necessary to use combustible heating, such as fireplaces and gas- and oil-fired furnaces.
In September's "Fire Side Chat" we talked about false alarms and how they can overwhelm public agencies, such as firefighters and police personnel, impact municipal budgets, and how end users are often fined to offset the negative monetary effects.
A man's home is his castle, or so the adage goes. Naturally along with this famous saying comes the feeling of safety and security, misplaced as it often is for a surprising number of homeowners are killed in home fires every year.
False fire alarms affect everyone - from the firefighters whose job it is to respond to them to those who live and work where they occur.
Society's infatuation with wireless technology didn't start with the advent of the cell phone. This love affair actually began with an invention called the radio in or about 1922. The introduction of the television simply clinched it.
In the past many signal transmission technologies have been devised in order to send alarm signals to a monitoring station with the intent of summoning a local fire brigade. Each one reflected the newest and greatest transmission technologies of its time.
Sprinkler systems are an important part of an end user’s overall fire protection program. Not only are these systems often required by the local authority having jurisdiction (AHJ), but ...
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