When is a fire alarm system required? Well, I thought I had a good idea considering I have been in the fire protection  industry for sometime. Until today, when I received a call from a manager of a Cinema. I asked him is he upgrading his current fire alarm system, and he said ” We don’t have one.” He then when on to say, “The Fire Authorities have inspected the Cinema and said all is fine.” I asked the next obvious question, “How are you expected to evacuate the Cinema in an event of a fire activation?” “We would shout FIRE!”

I was then told that the reason the Cinema is considering a fire alarm system is because they are upgrading to an automatic projector. I was asking myself was the projectionist there fire alarm system??

Confused, I attended the Cinema the next day to carry out a survey, curious to see what I would find. Well, the Cinema’s main auditorium can seat 300 people, there is a basement that contains the electrical intake area and a first floor that has two offices and the projector room.

On completion of my survey, I came to the conclusion, there is no way this building should be open to the public without a fire alarm.

The purpose of a fire alarm is to identify the source of a fire at an early stage and to raise the alarm. This will give the occupants as much time as possible to use the designated escape routes and escape to a place of safety before the escape routes become impassable.

Due to the artistic decoration and beautiful architecture, I have decided to design a wireless fire alarm system for the obvious reasons; Limited disruption to the Cinema and there would be virtually no damage to the decoration.

My design also considered  that this is a venue of public entertainment, and as such I designed a system to alert the staff of a fire situation without alerting the public. A 3 minute timer would commence giving staff the time to investigate the fire alarm activation.

The Wirelss fire alarm system would have a “2 stage” facility.
Stage 1 – Non Public Mode – In the event of an activation of a smoke detector or manual call point, all sounders and strobes will operate, causing an instant evacuation of the premises.
Stage 2 – Public Mode – In the event of an activation of a smoke detector or manual call point, only the visual aids ( Strobes), will activate and a 3 minute timer will start. This 3 minute timer will allow the staff time to investigate the fire alarm activation. After the investigation, if it is a false alarm the fire alarm can be reset without disturbing the film showing or evacuating a public event. The 3 minute timer can be overridden if a manual call point be activated within the 3 minute time period, and this will evacuate the Cinema straightaway.

The fire alarm relay to be interfaced into the projector will operate on Stage 2 – Public Mode, after the 3 minute timer has elapsed or if the staff evacuated the Cinema.

Well, I hope we get the job.