If you are running a business, it is important to understand that fire alarm systems for commercial businesses are different than fire alarm systems for residential homes. Fire alarm systems for commercial use fall under three different broad categories: conventional fire alarms, addressable fire alarms, and hybrid fire alarms.

The type of fire alarm this is best for your business depends entirely upon the way that your business is structured and the type of work that you do with your business. A fire inspector or alarm specialist, like those at Eastern Fire, can evaluate your business setup and help make sure that you have the right type of fire alarm system.

Conventional Fire Alarms

With a conventional fire alarm system, your building is broken up into zones. Each zone of your building includes fire alarms that are hardwired all the way to your central control panel.

The hardwired zone setup of a conventional fire alarm allows you to use different types of fire alarms throughout your building. This is helpful if you have areas of your business that do different tasks that would require different fire alarm systems, such as a room full of servers and a room full of explosive chemicals.

A hardwired zone setup also makes it easy to test your fire alarm system and determine if an alarm is broken. With a hardwired system, you'll be able to easily trace and figure out which alarm in a particular zone is broken. Multiple fire alarms in one zone may be hardwired together.

Addressable Fire Alarm

With an addressable fire alarm system, you are able to monitor each individual alarm throughout your building. Instead of monitoring each zone of your building, you are able to monitor each individual fire alarm. This allows for a more intelligent system, where you are able to individually check and address each alarm throughout your building. Each alarm has its own unique code when you look at your central controlling unit so you will be able to quickly identify which particular alarm, not just which zone, is not working or is going off at a particular moment in time. It allows for a great level of monitoring and control over your fire alarm system.

Hybrid Fire Alarm

A hybrid fire alarm system allows these two types of systems to work together in one central panel. You can have parts of your building controlled by hardwired zone fire alarms, and other parts of your building controlled with addressable fire alarms that provides you with monitoring over each particular alarm. This type of fire alarm setup is often the best, as it allows you to customize your fire alarm system to fit the specific needs of your business.

If you run a commercial business, make sure that you understand the type of fire alarm system that you have in place, that you understand how to use the central control panel to monitor the working status of your fire alarms, and that you know how to use it to identify where a fire is coming if the alarms go off.