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Hybrid Fire Detection for Warehouse Extensions

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A warehouse is a commercial building used by manufacturers, importers, exporters, wholesalers and many more to store their products. Warehouses are usually very large buildings with large open areas. These buildings often contain lots of machinery and equipment used to transport and move the contents in an out of the building.

As with most commercial buildings, warehouses have many fire risks and hazards. Therefore, it is essential that a reliable fire detection system is installed to protect the building, it’s contents, staff, personnel and visitors from fire.

The Best Fire Alarm System for Warehouses

Due to the height, unpredictable airflow and layout of most warehouses, traditional style detection is largely ineffective and cannot provide reliable detection. Passive detection systems are unable to provide high-sensitivity detection in such large areas and are prone to contamination.

Aspirating smoke detection (ASD), on the other hand, can overcome issues caused by voluminous and high airflow areas by actively drawing air from the protected area into a detection chamber. Therefore, ASD is the most suitable solution and the most widely used detection type in warehouses.

Extending an Aspirating Smoke Detection System

Quite often, as businesses expand, it is necessary to increase warehouse space in order to keep up with demand. However, when extending warehouse space, it is also necessary to extend the fire detection system to ensure reliable detection throughout all areas of the warehouse and extending an ASD system can be a difficult task.

Extending the loop wiring of an existing fire alarms system to cater for additional aspirating smoke detectors means installing new cabling, a task that is not only time-consuming but also costly and disruptive. Installing new cable runs could cause downtime to business operation and result in loss of revenue.

What is the Solution?

The solution is to a use a wireless input/output device to connect additional aspirating smoke detectors to the existing fire alarm system via the original wiring loop using Wi-Fyre – a wireless fire detection solution from Eurofyre.

Wi-Fyre allows hardwired and wireless technology to form a complete fire detection solution. This means that wireless devices can be incorporated into a new or existing fire alarm system to avoid expensive cable runs and reduce disruption to the operation of a building.

How Can Wi-Fyre Be Used to Extend an ASD System?

At the heart of the Wi-Fyre system is the Wi-Fyre Transponder. This is installed into the existing fire alarm wiring via a compatible interface and can communicate with up to 30 wireless field devices such as sounders, call points, detectors and I/O modules.

A Wi-Fyre wireless I/O module, installed in the new area, can monitor and report fault and fire signals from an aspirating smoke detector back to the panel wirelessly.

A wireless survey head is also available and must be used to ensure that the signal between the I/O device and transponder is strong enough for the system to operate effectively.

Wi-Fyre has six modes of user-selectable operation for increased compatibility with a range of systems:

  • Conventional
  • ProFyre 2-Wire addressable
  • ProFyre addressable
  • Addressable (collective)
  • Reflective
  • Standalone

For more information about Wi-Fyre, please feel free to give us a call on +44 (0)1329 835024 or email [email protected] where we would be happy to answer any questions.

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