The 100% wireless and EN 54 certified SmartNet fire detection and alarm system from Cygnus has been installed at Hagley Hall, an 18th Century Palladian mansion situation in 250 acres of landscaped parkland on the borders of Worcestershire and the West Midlands.
The Grade 1 listed building is privately owned by Viscount Cobham and is a popular weddings and events venue, as well as being open to the public for tours. Dating back to 1760, Hagley Hall has been in the hands of the Lyttelton family since then. In 1925, a fire swept through the house and destroyed much of the library and many pictures, though despite boiling lead pouring from the roof of the house, everyone inside managed to escape. Hagley Hall was subsequently lovingly restored by the 9th Viscount and his wife.
Today, the Hall has been equipped with a BS 5839 L1 rated fire detection and alarm system, which is a requirement of the property’s insurers and an upgrade from the previous system. The new SmartNet system features 144 devices comprising smoke detectors, call points and sounders, and a 16-zone SmartNet control panel, which were all installed in just one week.
The system had to be installed in rooms with intricate ceilings and plasterwork, so installing a full wireless system meant that the need for costly and potentially destructive cabling work was eliminated, according to Jason Smith of MarkOne Safety Solutions.
“A wireless solution made perfect sense for a historic Grade 1 building. The SmartNet devices proved to be so powerful that there was no need to install any signal boosters, which would have required cabling. The equipment was also straightforward to install, so we completed the entire project within a week.”
SmartNet, which is the world’s first 100% wireless and EN 54 certified fire detection and alarm system, uses self-healing mesh technology, which helps eliminate radio blackspots by enabling devices to communicate with neighbouring devices and ‘signal hop’ to the panel. This signal path redundancy increases reliability and resilience and comes into its own when a device is not in direct line-of-sight of the panel, or when subsequent building alterations are made.
The 100% wireless SmartNet system enables installation in historic buildings or those with specific aesthetic considerations, with minimal disruption to the fabric of the building and to occupants. It can be installed in days compared to weeks or months for a hard-wired system, depending on project size.
All the components of the SmartNet system are certified to the relevant parts of EN 54 – the European suite of standards for fire detection and alarm systems – and specifically EN54-25, the radio communications standard. Giving peace of mind to both installers and end users that SmartNet is a reliable, robust and resilient fire detection and alarm system.
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