The LWF Blog

Fire Safety Engineering for Design – Fire Detection & Alarm Systems – Part 154

October 16, 2023 10:27 am

LWF’s Fire Safety Engineering blog series is written for Architects, building designers and others in the construction industry to highlight and promote discussion on all topics around fire engineering. In part 153, LWF continued to talk about the different types of fire alarm and concentrated on heat detectors. In part 154, we continue by discussing aspirating systems.

In the past, an aspirating system might have been seen as an expensive option and one that wasn’t always entirely reliable, leading to false alarms being triggered. In recent years, however, the cost of such systems and the overall resiliency has improved greatly making them a viable choice for various applications.

In some environments, particularly those where expensive equipment is kept such as computer servers and telephone exchanges, an aspirating system may be employed in order to detect and alert to smoke before the onset of flaming combustion.

An aspirating system may also be an appropriate choice in areas where space is limited and access for maintenance of standard fire alarm detectors would be problematic.

Heritage buildings are sometimes an issue when it comes to fire alarm system installations because the need to conceal the detectors is a consideration. An aspirating system can be ideal for these circumstances, as the pipework can be hidden easily and the sensing unit can be located away from the area under protection.

An aspirating system can be broken down into its composite parts, as follows:

• An extremely sensitive smoke detector (between 10x and 200x more sensitive than a typical point detector) housed in a control unit
• Pipework, drilled at regular intervals and installed throughout the area to be protected, connected to the detector (the holes serve as individual smoke detectors)
• A pump to draw the air through the pipes to the detector where the sample is analysed to detect the presence of smoke
• An optional filter to remove dust particles etc. which may have been drawn into the pipework
• Electronic equipment to indicate the presence of smoke and control the operation of output relays etc.

In part 155 of LWF’s series on fire engineering, we will continue to look at aspirating systems and what environments they may be suitable for, as well as looking at the response configurations. In the meantime, if you have any questions about this blog, or wish to discuss your own project with one of our fire engineers, please contact us.

Lawrence Webster Forrest has been working with their clients since 1986 to produce innovative and exciting building projects. If you would like further information on how LWF and fire strategies could assist you, please contact the LWF office on 0800 410 1130.

While care has been taken to ensure that information contained in LWF’s publications is true and correct at the time of publication, changes in circumstances after the time of publication may impact on the accuracy of this information.