It is vital that your facility has the correct fire prevention capabilities and it’s important to ensure that these systems are properly checked and maintained. The annual retesting of an enclosure’s integrity is important as it plays such an important role with regard to the ability of a system to function correctly. Therefore, it has become essential that it is part of the system’s annual maintenance. This is also a legal requirement.
It is best to think of it as an MOT for your enclosure. It is also necessary to ensure that the suppression system (Inert, Chemical even Aerosol) continues to provide effective protection throughout the duration of the serviced life of the system. It is therefore essential that as part of the routine inspection and maintenance procedure, the retention time, the concentration and the pressure relief facilities are checked annually. This is recognized in the EN, ISO and NFPA standards. It is therefore advisable to conduct a retest every year regardless of whether any modifications or alterations have been made.
Annual maintenance is conducted for a number of reasons. The first is to ensure that the system itself is capable of detecting a fire and if detection occurs, it needs to send notification to security and sound the alarm to warning personnel and put emergency services on standby.
Should the situation deteriorate it needs to shut off relevant resources, closing dampers and shutting down power supplies to prevent ignition. Finally, if implemented, it needs to initiate the discharge of the extinguishing system(s).
It is therefore vital that all enclosures are adequately sealed to prevent any excess loss of agent and to stop fire and smoke accessing from adjacent zones keeping air ingress to a minimum.
Since 2006, NFPA, BS (ISO and EN) standards have all stipulated that such enclosures must undergo integrity testing, once a year or more frequently if the enclosure changes in any way. To guarantee the performance of the system, it has to be checked and serviced regularly, which is why we recommend you include Room Integrity testing as part of an annual maintenance and service package.
We offer an annual maintenance service package throughout the UK.
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