In apartments and private homes are usually smoke alarms conforming to the standard EN14604 used. The detectors can either be stand alone, making a local alarm in the apartment, or be connected to a gateway in a smart home and then also alert the tenant via a push note in his or her smart phone. Occasionally the smoke alarm is connected via a gateway to a manned emergency center as part of a burglar alarm system.
Smoke alarms are normally battery operated and doesn’t require any infrastructure in the apartment or the rest of the building and are therefore very convenient to install. The down side is that the alarming is local and if the tenant is not at home the fire will spread and be powerful before the neighbours react and call the fire brigade. The consequence of the delayed alarming is increased danger to people and unnecessary damages to the building and private property.
The alternative solution would be to install a fire detection system compliant with the EN54 standard, with detection in both the common areas and apartments and to connect the system with direct alarm transmission to the fire brigade. Faster reaction and a significantly more advanced detection technology would provide improved safety and security, but with higher demands on the building infrastructure and a significant risk for false alarms to the fire brigade whenever a beef is too hard fried.
For Panasonic it is important to always be able to offer the highest level of safety and security and we have therefore developed innovative solutions to overcome the downsides of having EN54 systems in apartment buildings. The solution is called local alarm acknowledgement unit and if a detector is activated a local alarm will be activated in the apartment and the tenant then has 30 seconds to acknowledge the alarm by pushing a button on the LAAU and the sounder is silenced and the alarm transmission is stopped for 3 minutes. If the smoke is ventilated everything is OK and the fire brigade stay at the station, if not there is still a problem and they will come immediately. To make sure that the system can be used in all apartments Panasonic offers both wired and wireless versions of all components needed for the apartment.