Typically, Aspirating Smoke Detection (or ASD) is used to protect larger areas from fire. ASD’s ability to actively draw air from large areas can help tackle the issues created by high ceilings, open spaces and smoke stratification, making it the ideal solution. However, there is a wide range of smaller applications where ASD is a more than suitable choice.
Please read on for some examples of how a carefully designed system can provide a cost effective and reliable answer for tackling fire and smoke detection in the smaller areas of your business.
Server Rooms and Small Data Centres
A server room or small data centre is usually a small air-conditioned room that is dedicated to the operation of computer servers. These servers often run for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and generate high levels of heat. It is for this reason that these facilities need to be properly cooled and well-ventilated.
This creates a problematic environment for fire detection. Conventional detectors are usually unsuitable as the heat from running machines can cause a heat detector to go into alarm. Air conditioning and ventilation can delay reaction times and affect smoke reaching traditional smoke detectors.
A well designed aspirating smoke detection system, using high-sensitivity detectors, can overcome these issues by actively drawing air from the room into its detection chamber to detect smoke and raise the alarm.
Packaged HVAC Units
Packaged heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) units are also commonly stored in small rooms or cupboards. The nature of an HVAC unit causes disruption to air patterns which can cause difficulties in fire detection. Not only do disrupted air patterns cause issues, if a fire was to break out smoke can enter the ventilation system and become heavily diluted and therefore be unrecognisable to traditional type detectors.
Highly sensitive ASD can overcome these issues and provide accurate and reliable detection for a packaged HVAC unit.
Generator Enclosures
Backup generators are often used in businesses in order to provide constant operation even in the event of power loss. These generators are often noisy and therefore commonly stored in separate enclosures away from the day-to-day operational areas of a business, often out of reach of a building’s main fire detection system. Not only do generators create heat, causing issues when using traditional point detectors, but they also produce exhaust fumes. Therefore, a smoke detection system that can differentiate between smoke from fire and smoke from exhaust is essential.
An aspirating smoke detection system, optimised for small spaces, with true smoke detection technology would be the ultimate choice for an area such as this.
The Eurofyre ICAM ILQ aspirating smoke detector is the ideal solution for smaller applications such as these by providing highly sensitive, laser-based, absolute smoke detection.
Eurofyre supply a wide range of aspirating smoke detection systems to cater for a multitude of applications. For more information please feel free to get in touch either by telephone on 44 (0)1329 835024, email to [email protected], or via the contact form on our contact page.
