The fire alarm within a property is a vital piece of equipment. It offers early detection of a potential fire and alerts others. If you need adequate detection of a fire and a warning triggered, then a fire alarm is what you need. However, what you don’t need is false fire alarms. In this blog post we look at the common causes of false fire alarms so you can work to avoid them in your premises.
According to Gov.uk, in the year ending 2018 there were 556.884 fires attended to by the UK Fire and Rescue Service. Out of these, 41% were false alarms. This is a huge amount of time, resources and money wasted on call outs for the emergency services that could have been avoided.
So, let’s look at the common causes of false fire alarms so you can look to avoid them in your premises.
What Is A False Fire Alarm?
A false fire alarm is an alarm signal from your fire alarm system that has not been caused by a fire. It is important to note that this is not the same as a fire drill or fire alarm test. Instead, a false fire alarm is not planned or scheduled, like a test or drill would be.
What Are The Common Causes Of False Fire Alarms?
There are a number of various factors that could contribute to a false fire alarm occurring. By identifying the cause of the fire alarm, you can take actionable measures to avoid false alarms occurring in the future. It is important to note that a modern and properly maintained fire alarm system will rarely suffer equipment malfunctions – so think what else could be the reason for the false fire alarm.
Sometimes the mismanagement of fire alarm systems can be the main reason behind the occurrence of false fire alarms. Make sure that you and your team are properly education of the maintenance of a fire alarm system. Your team need to know how to effectively maintain it to keep the system in good working order.
The common triggers for false fire alarms, with smoke detection technology, are things like aerosols and humidity or steam. Fire alarm systems can also be triggered by dust build up. If the fire alarm system was poorly installed or is poorly maintained this can also result in a false alarm. Smoking materials can trigger a false alarm too.
There could also be accidental damage to the fire alarm system, or equipment malfunction if it’s an older system. If this is the case, we recommend calling in the fire alarm engineer experts. They can test, check, maintain and repair your fire alarm systems. This will help to avoid the risk of false fire alerts in the future.
