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Best known as the home of Britain’s Trident submarine fleet, HM Naval Base Clyde is now also the location of one of the country’s largest fully networked, analogue addressable fire detection and alarm systems. Supplied, designed and commissioned by Morecambe-based Cookfire, under contracts awarded by Babcock Naval Services (BNS), the expanding system currently incorporates some 80 Gent Vigilon fire panels. A newly developed Gent network card, allowing direct connection of the panels to the base’s extensive fibre-optic network, has made the economical creation of such a large system possible.
The latest phase of the system has seen the installation of several thousand sensors from Gent’s new and innovative S-Quad range. As well as featuring both smoke and heat sensing elements, most of the units supplied have a built-in sounder with voice messaging and a strobe alarm, the latter helping the base to comply with the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA). This unique combination of functions has meant that fewer individual devices have had to be fitted and wired, and all are powered directly from the Vigilon panel loops, reducing installation time. The device’s use of a patented dual-angle optical smoke detector – which is able to differentiate between smoke, steam and dust - will minimise the incidence of false alarms.
According to Cookfire, one reason Babcock Naval Services chose the Vigilon-based solution was Gent’s policy of backward compatibility. As BNS’s Building and Site Services Manager, David Bird explains: “Because Gent always strives to ensure that its latest product offerings are compatible with what has gone before, we were confident that the system would not suddenly become obsolete a few years down the line.”
Cookfire’s Managing Director, John Cook, was also impressed: “Though this is the first site to use the fibre-optic networks cards, they have all worked perfectly since day one. The S-Quad sensors, which we first employed in our own offices and factory, have also been trouble-free, which is often not the case with new technology.”
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