Fire Alarm

Southern County Care have enjoyed over 25 years’ experience of providing fire safety solution to the care sector.

So it’s never been a better time to call on our fully qualified team to help you provide the highest standard of fire safety for your Service Users, Employees and Business. Assured quality is guaranteed from the most sophisticated addressable fire detection and alarm system design and installation, through to system extensions, non addressable (conventional) to addressable upgrades, detector replacement, fault finding and repairs to maintenance, certification and consultancy. Southern County Care’s qualified team will lead you through the process no matter how large or small.

Addressable or Non Addressable (also known as
conventional) systems?

The British Standard for fire detection and alarm systems for non-domestic dwellings is BS5839 part 1 2017. The Standard states that
when considering the type of system for a residential care premises, in general it is possible for both addressable and non-addressable to satisfy the design considerations of the Standard. However, it goes on where accurate and unambiguous information about the location of a fire is critical to the safety of life, it is sometimes necessary to use only an addressable system.

In the latest Standard it does recommend “Where occupants of a building are going to need assistance from staff to evacuate the building (e.g. in
residential care premises and hospitals), the fire detection and fire alarm system should be addressable if the building has facilities for more than
ten people to sleep. This doesn’t mean that your current system is non-compliant, it’s just that it was designed and installed to an earlier British Standard. Southern County Care can offer free no obligation consultancy regarding systems and system upgrades.

Non-Addressable (conventional) Systems

As with an Addressable system the premises are divided into fire zones, the non-addressable panel will accurately identify events on its system from fire to different types of fault and will inform you in which fire zone this event has occurred. It will not tell you the exact location like an addressable system will.

Addressable Fire Detection and Alarm Systems

Every device on an addressable system has its own unique identity which, in the event of a fire will display at the Fire Panel showing the exact location of the fire allowing staff to respond quicker. Addressable systems also pinpoint faults and logs events to aid maintenance and testing.

Upgrading to an Addressable Fire Detection and Alarm System

Southern County Care can offer a free no obligation consultancy and quotation to upgrade your existing Fire Detection and Alarm System to an addressable system.

L1 System Certification

Southern County Care provides a Fire Detection and Alarm System category certification service. Residential care premises will almost always require an L1 category Fire Detection and Alarm System. L is for the protection of life, category L1 requires systems to cover every part of the premises. The object of an L1 system is to provide the earliest possible warning of fire, so as to achieve the longest available time to escape.

Southern County Care will work closely with you to update your existing fire plans or draw up new full colour fire zone and evacuation plans.

Fire Telephone & Disabled Refuge Systems

A Disabled Refuge System is a System that allows voice communication in either direction between a central control point and a number of other points throughout a premises in safe locations where the caller can be reassured and await assisted evacuation.