Questions · Fire detection
When do you need a voice evacuation system with spoken messages?
When you have to tell people what to do and not only that something is happening. CTE requires it expressly in Public Assembly use when occupancy exceeds 500 people: the alarm system has to be able to put out spoken messages. In Hospital use it asks that the system be able to transmit local alarms, a general alarm and verbal instructions.
That is the real reason, more than the threshold. In an office tower, a shopping centre or a hospital, sending everybody out at once fills the stairs and makes the evacuation worse. With messages by zone you evacuate the affected storey and the ones next to it, ask the rest to wait and change the message as things develop. A sounder does not do that.
Voice alarm systems have their own parts of UNE-EN 54 —the one for the control equipment and the one for the loudspeakers— and one requirement that gets neglected on site: intelligibility. A message that cannot be understood where the people are does not comply, however loud it sounds, and that is measured at handover; it is not assumed.
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