The requirement for monitoring of gas cylinders has been in the standards for over 20 years but not often supplied on gas suppression installations, and its importance often overlooked.
When gas is discharged it should produce an alarm to warn personnel immediately and to provide a record of the occurrence.
This is a requirement of the standards (shown below) and should be adopted for all installations.
SANS 369-1 2004: 4.2.1 states:
Confirmation of discharge of fire extinguishing medium should be indicated at the control equipment. The method of deriving the signal should be a pressure or flow switch, located so as to indicate that discharge of gas has occurred from any storage container in the system. For example, in the case of a bank of containers the discharge of gas from any container into the central manifold should be indicated.
The majority of gas cylinders and fire extinguishing control panels supplied in the industry provide this facility and should be connected for all systems.
The inspection bureau have included this onto their checklists for the future.
VISIT www.fireza.net NOW