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Having a bit of a mare at the moment with a small 2 story HMO (6 single rooms with shared kitchen) which was fitted relatively recently (2016 or so I think) by someone else but I was asked to do an annual certificate for one of my regular landlords as she was being fleeced by a 'professional' company.
Last year was fine with no issues and only thing that came up at this year's inspection in January was a missing detector in one of the rooms. Also appeared someone from the management company had replaced some with incompatible models, but they did all work.
Since then there have been several false alarms leading to call outs late at night by the management company engineers, who did nothing but unplug them all and push it back to the landlord, claiming a 'loose connection' on one visit, and a 'faulty alarm' on another.
Since then I've replaced the incompatible ones, redone all the original dodgy terminations at each fitting, and yet apparently they were going for 2 hours last night.
It's a Grade D LD1 system, with detectors in each bedroom, up and down hallways, and heat in kitchen. There is no detector near the kitchen that could be picking up cooking fumes.
The units are all Firex, mostly KF20s with one KF20R and a KF30 heat alarm. The oldest ones are still fine until 2028, and they all had batteries in place.
I was able to test continuity from the start of the circuit to what I think is the end, though didn't do IR testing as some units were still in place. They all tested fine with test button and smoke can.
The claim is that the hush button isn't working when they do go off, but since there are no staff on site and the tenants are not the most reliable it's hard to get accurate information.
My suspicion is that at least one of the tenants is smoking a certain substance and/or buggering with the detector, but hard to prove that of course. It's not very local and access is difficult too as the housing management company has to be there to get access to the bedrooms.
Are false alarms that cause multiple hour long alarming sessions out of nowhere that common with these alarms? If so what are possible causes?
Any suggestions for other tests that could be done to identify or confirm that there is no fault in the system?
I've read through the latest 5839-6, and for existing HMOs, they actually only recommend LD2, so I'm toying with the idea of suggesting the room ones aren't interlinked with the others, but wary of reducing the existing protection without very good reason.
Although each room has fire doors, it's really only a small house, and the hallway smokes should be enough to alert rooms if necessary. There are no cooking facilities in the room, and not even kettles are allowed is my understanding. However, the tenants can be short term or require some supervision (albeit not on site), so there is likely a higher than usual risk of a fire starting in a room.
One benefit of a full alarm system as fitted to another HMO she has is that it will show tamper and individual room alarms, but obviously there are significant extra install and maintenance costs involved with having one of those when it's not needed.
Last year was fine with no issues and only thing that came up at this year's inspection in January was a missing detector in one of the rooms. Also appeared someone from the management company had replaced some with incompatible models, but they did all work.
Since then there have been several false alarms leading to call outs late at night by the management company engineers, who did nothing but unplug them all and push it back to the landlord, claiming a 'loose connection' on one visit, and a 'faulty alarm' on another.
Since then I've replaced the incompatible ones, redone all the original dodgy terminations at each fitting, and yet apparently they were going for 2 hours last night.
It's a Grade D LD1 system, with detectors in each bedroom, up and down hallways, and heat in kitchen. There is no detector near the kitchen that could be picking up cooking fumes.
The units are all Firex, mostly KF20s with one KF20R and a KF30 heat alarm. The oldest ones are still fine until 2028, and they all had batteries in place.
I was able to test continuity from the start of the circuit to what I think is the end, though didn't do IR testing as some units were still in place. They all tested fine with test button and smoke can.
The claim is that the hush button isn't working when they do go off, but since there are no staff on site and the tenants are not the most reliable it's hard to get accurate information.
My suspicion is that at least one of the tenants is smoking a certain substance and/or buggering with the detector, but hard to prove that of course. It's not very local and access is difficult too as the housing management company has to be there to get access to the bedrooms.
Are false alarms that cause multiple hour long alarming sessions out of nowhere that common with these alarms? If so what are possible causes?
Any suggestions for other tests that could be done to identify or confirm that there is no fault in the system?
I've read through the latest 5839-6, and for existing HMOs, they actually only recommend LD2, so I'm toying with the idea of suggesting the room ones aren't interlinked with the others, but wary of reducing the existing protection without very good reason.
Although each room has fire doors, it's really only a small house, and the hallway smokes should be enough to alert rooms if necessary. There are no cooking facilities in the room, and not even kettles are allowed is my understanding. However, the tenants can be short term or require some supervision (albeit not on site), so there is likely a higher than usual risk of a fire starting in a room.
One benefit of a full alarm system as fitted to another HMO she has is that it will show tamper and individual room alarms, but obviously there are significant extra install and maintenance costs involved with having one of those when it's not needed.
