Posted By Robert S Woods When do you test youre fire alarms? The powers that be have decided that we should test ours at 5.00pm on a Friday. Would others agree that this is not the best time? My reasoning and experiance suggessts that if anything should go wrong we would have all on getting an engineer out. I would probably not get home on time (very important) and neither would the key holder who would have to stop back (a lot less important). You comments as always would be appreciated.

Posted By John T I would suggest a check of the alarm system on the first monday of each month at a time to suit your organisation. Not just before lunch or before people are due to leave the premises, this way you would have the remaining of the working day/week to analyse and maybe rectify any problems highlighted during the test. Hope this helps, John

Posted By Kate Graham Oh and Monday is usually a bad day because of bank holidays.

Posted By Ashley Wood It depends on what line of business you are in. May sound strange but if you are an hotelier for example, around 11am is normally a good time due to the likelihood that all guest would have left and the cleaners would be in the rooms to let you know if the alarm can or cannot be heard. If you are in a factory or a shop that shuts at 5 or 5.30 then this would not be a good time to test your alarms as people will either have left or will be 'switched off' and ready to leave. Any day other than monday or friday is good as these will not be effected by the bank holiday system. 11am is best as this is when people are alert rather than 5pm, but as I said, it depends on your industry. One last thing, it is a requirement of the new RR(FS)O that alarms are tested weekly.