All papers
Everything on the site you can read or use, on one page: grouped as the site is, with the date each piece was published or last reviewed. No pictures and nothing to load, so it prints cleanly and reads well aloud.
Looking for one piece? Search, at the top of every page, finds it by the words inside. The same list is also a plain text file, one line per page with its full address.
Knowledge Hub (22)
Standby batteries (10)
Battery series: sizing standby batteries to BS 5839-8:2023 (10)
- The page I almost turned
- Your next voice alarm battery quote should be smaller than your last
- The worked example that doesn't work
- What battery manufacturers should publish, but do not
- Peukert's law oversizes your voice alarm batteries
- A 1200 W voice alarm's battery is sized by its quietest 24 hours
- Voice alarm panels can cry wolf and still miss real faults
- How to avoid sizing your batteries on the wrong quiescent current measurements
- Voice alarm battery sizing, where the loudspeakers cut battery demand and the standby current pushes it higher
- Voice alarm batteries kept at 35 °C: 60 % of the life you paid for [and it's hotter around the batteries than you might think]
System design (3)
Testing and fault-finding (3)
Emergency messaging (2)
Maintenance (4)
Standards (3)
Martyn's Law (5)
- Does Martyn's Law require a PA system? reviewed
- Can a fire alarm system make lockdown or invacuation announcements? reviewed
- Under Martyn's Law, how do we warn back-of-house staff during a lockdown? reviewed
- Who can assess whether your PA or voice alarm meets Martyn's Law's communication requirements? reviewed
- Martyn's Law tier checker reviewed
Help (15)
- You've had the service visit, and all you got back was a tick sheet and some numbers
- There are so many standards. Do I have to buy and read every one?
- It keeps faulting, I'm told it needs replacing, and the budget isn't there
- People tell us the announcements sound awful
- Three companies have tried to fix it. It still isn't fixed.
- The panel is beeping and a fault light is on.
- Nothing is coming out of the loudspeakers in one area.
- The panel says battery fault, or mains fault even though the power is on.
- The fault was there this morning. Now it has gone.
- The panel says earth fault.
- Our loudspeakers are making a loud crackling noise.
- The refuge call point isn't working.
- The fault started after the works.
- During the fire alarm test, one floor didn't hear the message.
- The microphone in the fire control room no longer works.
Tools (11)
- Your voice alarm Maintenance Proposal
- The Takeover Check
- Voice alarm system health check
- Voice alarm standby battery calculator
- Two readings and a stopwatch: the quiescent current to size the battery on
- ZOE: how much Voice Alarm amplifier power does your building need?
- Why can't people understand the announcements, and will more loudspeakers fix it?
- What STI will we get?
- Martyn's Law tier checker reviewed
- See what the room does to speech
- Sheets to print for your voice alarm