Conventional Fire Alarm Panels and Devices

A conventional system reports by zone: every device on a zone circuit shares one identity at the panel, so the panel tells you the fire is somewhere in zone 3, and the engineer walks the zone to find it. An addressable system gives each device its own address, so the panel names the device and its location. Conventional remains the sensible specification on smaller buildings and simple zoning, where the cost and commissioning overhead of addressable is not justified.

Zoning follows the building and the fire strategy rather than a device count — BS 5839-1 sets limits on floor area per zone, search distance and zones crossing floors or fire compartments. In practice most small buildings land on a 2, 4 or 8 zone panel. Send us the layout or the zone chart and we will match the panel and the end-of-line arrangement to it.

Not safely. Conventional detectors differ in alarm current, end-of-line and resistor arrangements, and a panel is type-approved against specific device families. Mixing device families on one zone can break the fault-monitoring and invalidate the system certification. Keep the zone consistent with the panel manufacturer's compatibility list — tell us the panel model and we will confirm which devices go with it.

Yes. Replacement glasses and resettable elements for call points, spare keys, flush plates, end-of-line and installation kits, cover mouldings and relay modules are all part of the range. Quote the panel model and the part number off the old item, or describe it, and we will identify the current equivalent.