Fire alarm system maintenance in Kenya: what should be checked?

An alarm is only useful if people hear or see it. So test every sounder and beacon, ideally during the yearly inspection with each zone in turn.

Pay special attention to sleeping areas, plant rooms, toilets and noisy workshops. In these places, sound levels may be too low, so you may need extra sounders or beacons. Similarly, people with hearing impairments may need visual alarms or vibrating pagers. Where you have a voice evacuation system, check that messages play clearly in every zone.

Every fire alarm panel has standby batteries that keep it working during an outage. However, batteries age, especially in hot rooms and where outages are frequent. As a guide, sealed lead-acid batteries in fire panels usually need replacing every three to five years.

During service, the technician should measure battery voltage, test the charger and, at least yearly, run a load test. The technician should also inspect visible cabling: look for damage, loose fixings, missing fire-rated clips and cables exposed by building works. In addition, check that the mains supply is on a labelled, locked circuit.

False alarms waste time and, worse, teach people to ignore the alarm. Common causes include dust, steam from kitchens and showers, insects, cooking smoke and building works. Fortunately, you can reduce most of them. For example, move or change detector types in kitchens, cover detectors during dusty works and remove covers afterwards, and clean detectors regularly. In addition, record every false alarm, because patterns show where action is needed.

Equipment is only half of fire safety. People must also know what the alarm means and what to do. So include staff readiness in your fire alarm maintenance checklist. For example, make sure fire wardens know their zones, new staff learn the escape routes during induction and everyone takes part in at least one drill a year. After each drill, note how long evacuation took, which exits people used and any problems, such as locked doors or people who did not hear the sounders. In addition, keep the zone plan beside the panel up to date, because wardens and firefighters rely on it to find the source of an alarm quickly.