Here's a Friday question: When doing the weekly fire alarm tests, is there anything to say that the sounders have to activate, could the panel just be put into silent mode!? It will still show if the alarm has been activated (break glass point checked) but no audible alarm. We don't do it this way, just having a conversation with someone.

The explicit answer is in BS 5839-1: 2013: Code of practice for design, installation, commissioning and maintenance of systems in non-domestic premises. Unfortunately, due to copyright, I cannot include the relavant extract. It is also implicit in:- Article 17 of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 deals with Maintenance, extract copied below http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2005/20051541.htm#17 Maintenance (1) Where necessary in order to safeguard the safety of relevant persons the responsible person must ensure that the premises and any facilities, equipment and devices provided in respect of the premises under this Order or, subject to paragraph (6), under any other enactment, including any enactment repealed or revoked by this Order, are subject to a suitable system of maintenance and are maintained in an efficient state, in efficient working order and in good repair. The official guides to the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 mentioned above require that :- • All types of fire-warning systems should be tested once a week. • Testing of the system should be carried out by a competent person. Further guidance on testing and maintenance of fire warning systems can be found in British Standard 5839-1

If this is a wholly property protection fire alarm system (Cat P), why not test it silently, as long as it alerts whoever it should be alerting. But I guess this a life safety system, and as such, the primary aim is to provide a warning of fire to get people moving away from the risk. Without testing the sounders, its not really giving the assurance that the test is designed to do. As a former fire service safety auditor, I am struggling to think of a set of circumstances where I would have been content for a silent test such as this

good stuff here again The primary management tool is the fire risk assessment as the fire management system comes from that which should note that each circumstance can be different i.e. note Toe's very good example and My example sites specialist schools which have very [very] challenging children [from <11 to ~16] therein where the audible part of the weekly tests are only sounded once a month (this is because of very major behavioral issues + criminal records & tendencies) instead of every time a test was undertaken. In addition some schools have to have all doors locked which is opposite to the norm [on an alarm sounding children and staff retreated to a specialist in-house 'place of safety' until the fire service & police arrived [the police were always needed] ] I took the fire service with me all the way and they were very happy with the fire risk assessments which accounted for the individual circumstances and some of their fire risk assessors were trained up in areas that they had little experience in so all parties benefited Whilst there may be different words used in the two countries the underlying duties and principals are the same e.g. the protection of life

Where is the line drawn between distressing the resident and ensuring they get out in a fire situation? I would imagine an evacuation in the early hours would distress anyone but better out than in, as they say.

Just a technicality but you can't put a panel into silence alarm mode unless the alarms are sounding to start with. You could isolate the alarm zones but that is a different thing. If you do either of the above, then someone will soon complain that the regular disablement/silence beep is annoying and they can't work. If they are in a senior position they may try and stop it themselves by, for example, removing the mains fuse. This of course will have no effect until the battery runs out.

Alan - Just to pick up on one of your points vehicle reversing sounders and your comment "there would be no good reason in my mind to disable the sounder" We operate an forklift training site (training warehouse) where we have disabled the reversing beepers on the vehicles, as having 20 vehicles beeping all at once in a closed warehouse just was not acceptable, trainees could not hear the instruction from the trainers and the noise was distracting preventing them concentrating on the task or their test. We do however, have excellent controls in place to prevent persons being strut by the forklift. Having the sounders disabled also was good for the trainees because they did not rely on the sounders and HAD to look behind before reversing. Just another example where reasonable adjustments are applied through risk analysis as apposed to a blanket approach.