Smoke and Heat Alarm Requirements - New Conversion

[MickyVerdi]

We are just developing an old bank building, about 100 square meters per floor.   

The Basement and Ground Floor will be for commercial use as one unit, and that unit is correctly fire-separated from the Domestic Part according to current regs.

The Domestic Part is accessed through a separate front door, with a short corridor to the steps up. Each of the First and Second Floors will consist of a single two-bedroom flat with a hallway and all rooms lead direct off that hallway.   Our intention that each of those two flats will have a smoke alarm in the hallway, with a heat alarm in the kitchen and these would be mains-powered and interlinked just with the other alarm in the same flat.

We presume we will also need a communal alarm system covering the communal entranceway and the two stair landings, which will run off the landlord electricity supply.  To what standard must that alarm system be, please?   And am I correct in thinking that it does not need to interlink with any that are within the individual flats?

Thank you.

 

[AnthonyB]

If your conversion is in line with Approved Document B to the building regulations (which as a designer/developer you should read anyway) you do NOT need a common fire alarm - just smoke detector connected to your AOV (unless as a small building you are claiming the exemption allowing an OV then you don't even need that)

Don't let a fire alarm engineer or a general electrician fool you into spending money on a pointless alarm system you don't need and a risk assessment would tell you to remove or butcher anyway if installed.

If your design does not follow AD B (e..g no smoke control) and you wish to use an engineered solution incorporating simultaneous evacuation then you will need a communal alarm system which MUST extend inoto each flat with detection & sounders in addition to each flat's domestic alarms.