Fire detection systems that raise the alarm early

A fire detection system has one job: to notice a fire as early as possible and make sure everyone knows about it. It's made up of a few parts:

• Smoke detectors, which pick up smoke before flames take hold. They suit most rooms, passages and offices.
• Heat detectors, which react to a rapid rise in temperature or a fixed high temperature. They suit kitchens, garages and dusty areas where a smoke detector would go off for the wrong reasons.
• Manual call points, so anyone who sees a fire can raise the alarm by hand.
• Sounders, loud enough to be heard throughout the building.
• A control panel that shows where the alarm started.

Detection doesn't put a fire out. It buys time: time for people to leave, and time for the fire to be dealt with while it's still small.

Homes

The most important places are the passage outside the bedrooms, the main living areas and anywhere with a lot of electrical equipment. Detectors linked together mean a fire in the kitchen wakes people sleeping at the other end of the house.

Offices

The focus is getting everyone out quickly: early warning, call points on the escape routes and sounders that reach every room, including the bathrooms and the boardroom with the door shut.

Warehouses and workshops

These buildings are often empty at night and over weekends, with stock, fuel or materials that burn fast. High ceilings and dust need the right type of detector in the right place. Here, how quickly someone finds out matters as much as how loud the alarm is.

South Africa has clear standards for fire detection in buildings. SANS 10400-T uses a building's type and occupancy to decide whether it needs fire detection at all. SANS 10139 covers how fire detection and alarm systems in non-domestic buildings should be designed, installed, commissioned and maintained. These standards call for competent persons to do the work and sign the certificates, and SAQCC Fire, mandated by the Department of Employment and Labour, registers those people.

If your building needs a certified system for an occupancy certificate, a landlord or an insurer, you need to know that before you choose an installer.

Tell Marco upfront what certificate you've been asked for. He'll tell you straight whether it's one DBS can provide.

A fire detection system can fail quietly. Detectors collect dust, batteries in standalone units go flat, and a fault light on the panel can blink for months without anyone noticing. Test the system regularly, never paint over a detector, take dust covers off once building work is finished, and look into any fault the panel reports.

When you move furniture, put up partitions or change how a room is used, check that the detectors still cover it. A storeroom turned into an office, or an office turned into a kitchen, may need a different detector.

We don't publish prices, because buildings vary so much. These are the things that change the quote:

• The size of the building, the number of rooms and the ceiling heights.
• The type of building and how it's used.
• Smoke or heat detectors, and how many of each.
• A conventional panel, which shows the zone, or an addressable panel, which shows the exact detector.
• Cable routes, and how hard they are to run in a finished building.
• Whether you need a certified system for an occupancy certificate, a landlord or an insurer.

Fire detection sits in the same layer as your alarm system and CCTV. DBS Security is family-owned, with 25 years in the trade, and Pieter and Marco de Bruyn quote every job themselves. Get a free quote for fire detection, or see the areas we cover.