A potential hazard that is found in every enclosed space no matter if it’s your home or an industrial facility is fire. If your household or office isn’t properly protected from such an accident it can be a matter of minutes until it goes up in flames. Therefore safety measures should be taken in order to keep everyone safe.
One of these safety measures involves the use of fire alarms. They are the first line of defence when it comes to fires as they can warn you about it before a single flame has appeared. Any fire alarm, no matter what type it is can literally save your life. But when it comes to the most effective solution, fire sirens are your best bet.
Advantages of Fire Sounders
Range
The best thing about a fire sounder alarm is that it has a much larger warning range than a visual alarm. That’s because noise isn’t as easily blocked out as a light and thus a powerful enough fire alarm sounder can notify people who aren’t able to see it.
Effective
Since industrial sounders can notify you without being in your sight, they are much more effective than visual sounders. This is because you can act more quickly when there’s a fire, leaving you with more time to warn and potentially save others who haven’t yet been notified of it.
Versatile
Anyone who’s been close to a building engulfed in flames knows how much the heat coming off of it can be detrimental let alone the fire itself. Therefore it’s important to have a versatile solution that will let you know of such a danger without you having to have a burning smell enter your nostrils. This means you can place industrial sounders in areas where other fire sirens can’t be placed because they just simply won’t work.
Types of Fire Sounders by Method of Detection
Ionisation
There are different ways a fire alarm can detect smoke and the best for fast-burning fires is with the ionisation method. This solution works by having an electric current run between two metal plates. When the current is terminated by smoke it triggers the alarm to let people know that they might be in danger.
Heat
A fire alarm that detects smoke with heat is one that is able to sense a change in air temperature caused by flames. Because of this a heat detection method isn’t that accurate and it often causes false alarms caused by a change in humidity. They are often used in warehouses and storage facilities.
Photoelectric
An extremely reliable detection method that works similarly to the ionisation method is a fire alarm that relies on a photoelectric system. Instead of current flowing through, the photoelectric method relies on a beam of light, which when scattered by the smoke it sounds the alarm. A photoelectric alarm is best for small fires.
Combination
You can also get industrial sounders that combine ionisation and photoelectric systems together. This is the most reliable solution and also an accurate one since smoke is detected rather quickly and no false alarms occur because of the similarity of the methods.
Types of Tones Fire Sounders Use
Alarm
An alarm tone is a pulsating tone that has a high pulse-to-pause ratio which means it repeats quite a lot and has a frequency ranging from 2000 to 10 Hz.
Gong
A gong tone plays 3 different sounds and once done it repeats them over and over again. This tone is played in a frequency range between 970 and 900 Hz.
Continuous
This is a constant tone that doesn’t change at all and it plays at a frequency of 660 Hz.
Pulsating
A pulsating tone is similar to an alarm noise that doesn’t have a high pulse-to-pause ratio. Instead, it plays continuously with short pauses. It’s played at a frequency of 440 Hz.
Rising
A rising tone becomes higher in pitch the more it’s played until there is a short pause. After the pause, the tone starts at a lower pitch which is elevated until the pause comes again. The frequency range of this tone is between 500 and 1200 Hz.
Slowly Rising
This tone rises gradually and it becomes louder the more it progresses. The pitch stays unchanged when it reaches its highest note which is why the tone is played between 500 and 2400 Hz.
Falling
Unlike the slowly rising tone, the falling tone starts out much louder and then it gets lower the more it’s played until there is a pause. After the pause, it starts all over again. The falling tone is played between 2000 and 10 Hz.
Alternating
An alternating tone is one that switches between lower and higher tones all the time and thus it’s played in a frequency range between 440 and 554 Hz.
Conclusion
No matter how safe you think the building you reside in or how protected you are from a fire, you can never be safe without a proper fire alarm sounder. Sometimes all it takes is one high-pitched noise to save your life.
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