More and more buildings continue to be developed in the UK, increasing in size and height. This has led to a higher level of performance from the building service components, including the electrical supplies, especially when it comes to Life Safety.
Life safety systems are put in place in order to save lives by allowing the building occupants to evacuate during an emergency, while providing ease of access to critical services to contain the situation.
For a life safety system to be implemented, the building power supply should be terminated via a changeover device (automatic transfer switch or similar) located within the room housing the life safety and fire-fighting equipment, or in the case of a fire-fighting lift, within the fire-fighting shaft.
Automatic Transfer Switches (ATS) are essential wherever substantial power must be maintained, whether it is to ensure people’s safety in work or public space, or to maintain essential supplies to a vital process. The changeover device automatically operates the transition from the primary to the secondary power supply in the event of the loss of the primary supply to the building. The second source of power can either be from a generator or from an alternative/stand-by source.
Where the availability of the life safety and fire-fighting equipment is conditional to the occupation of the building, a bypass arrangement should be incorporated to enable the changeover device to be maintained without loss of power.
Craig & Derricott offer a full range of Auto Transfer Switches suitable for all installations including the requirements needed for buildings requiring life safety equipment.
As a market leading specialist of Automatic Transfer Equipment, Craig & Derricott are here to help you. C&D have designed their ATS units to be operational in a variety of installations such as hospitals, stately homes, water distribution facilities, airports, data centres, shopping centres, offices, apartments and railway.
Our range covers current ratings from 32A to 800A and manufactured to meet Life Safety Standards stated in BS8519:2010 and BS8519:2020.
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If you are unsure of what product is best suited for your project, contact us today and speak to our experts.
