Free Article: Commercial Fire Alarm System

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Commercial Fire Alarm System Types
By Arthur Sneddon

Even in these days of Internet access, it is impossible to avoid spending time in various commercial, business or industrial buildings. If you are employed in such a building, you probably have an occasional fire drill but for those who are just passing through on business, it's rare to consider fire safety during their stay. The safety of commercial sites is important.

Often, there are more people in such a building when a fire strikes. Unlike a home, the occupants of a commercial building are unfamiliar with the layout and the safest routes of escape. On top of all that, commercial and public buildings may deal with equipment that makes awareness of fire safety even more important. For these reasons, the commercial fire alarm system must meet with higher standards than home systems.

Alerting the Pros

A commercial fire alarm system must alert the occupants of the building, of course, but it must also send an alarm to the nearest fire department. This ensures that fire fighters will be on the scene as quickly as possible for rescue and to put the fire out. A commercial fire alarm system can fall into either of two categories. The central station commercial fire alarm system is monitored by a private company for signals of fire, of equipment malfunction or electrical malfunction.

The monitoring service notifies the nearest fire department and sends out personnel when it receives a fire alarm. It also sends out personnel to handle problems with equipment or electricity. A central station service might be a full service company that tests, inspects, maintains and repairs the system as well as monitoring the signals and resetting them after they go off. A local service company provides the same services except for monitoring the alarms which is subcontracted to a company that only performs the monitoring service.

The commercial fire alarm system that isn't monitored by a private service provider can fall into one of four types. There is the kind that only sounds the alarm for the building occupants. An auxiliary station commercial fire alarm system connects directly to a fire company dispatcher.

This type of service is only possible in a city equipped with street pull boxes. A local government agency might monitor fire alarms and call the nearest fire station or the property owner might provide 24-hour monitoring of its own. This might be the case for a large organization like a university or mall. The result is that a commercial fire alarm system is organized to provide the highest quality of safety.

Author Details:
Arthur Sneddon, writes for various web sites, such as The A to Z of Home Improvement, about home security, fire alarms etc.

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