Thomas Hammerberg, SET, CFPS, is president/ executive director of the Automatic Fire Alarm Association Inc., headquartered in Lake Mary, Fla. Hammerberg is on the NFPA 72 Technical Correlating, Protected Premises and Testing & Maintenance committees and is editor of the Testing & Maintenance chapter of the NFPA 72 Handbook, NFPA 90A, NFPA 101/5000 Building Services & Fire Protection Equipment Committee and the ICC Industry Advisory Committee. Hammerberg may be reached at TomHammerberg@afaa.org.
In today’s world, just about all fire alarm control units are created equal. What I mean by that is that the quality is comparable and similar controls have similar features.
Although there is a lot of talk about integrated fire alarm systems today, this is not a new concept. I installed my first integrated fire alarm system back in 1984.
Fire alarm devices are needed to start the fire protection process. Whether it is a manual pull station, smoke detector or waterflow alarm, if something does not activate the fire
