Every good car owner knows that you have to take your vehicle in for an oil change every 3,000-5,000 miles. Unfortunately, every good car owner doesn’t always follow those guidelines because they don’t understand the importance of regular maintenance. If you drive for too long without an oil change, your vehicle’s engine will operate less efficiently, causing important components to wear out, ultimately causing your engine to shut down – requiring it to be replaced entirely. The simple act of changing your oil and oil filter regularly can avoid a very costly situation.

Similarly, your very early smoke detection apparatus (VESDA) must be regularly maintained in order to operate efficiently and perform its intended manufacturer’s specifications – to keep your facility and people safe.

A VESDA unit draws air samples from your protected room through a network of pipes to detect the faintest presence of smoke particles using a sensitive laser to scan the room’s air sample. The VESDA unit can detect smoke before it is ever visible by the naked eye, which allows investigation and intervention during smoldering and before a fire ever breaks out. The VESDA’s sensitive detection unit and pipe system makes it the perfect fire protection solution for data centers, healthcare facilities, power generation stations, correctional facilities, and more.

In order to provide accurate detection and protect the system’s internal optics, the VESDA unit relies upon a filter that pulls dust and other particles out of the air sample to prevent false alarms. Much like your car’s oil change, if the VESDA’s filter is not replaced regularly, the unit’s performance will deteriorate until it, ultimately, fails to function altogether. However, unlike your car’s oil change, the danger of an unmaintained unit isn’t a just a costly replacement, it could mean a tragic loss of life or irreplaceable loss of property.

Our partners at Fike have recently released a helpful flyer that can help you keep your VESDA unit operating at top performance. Fike recommends that your VESDA’s filter be replaced every two years. If your VESDA unit is more than 10 years old, you should strongly consider upgrading your system to a newer unit to avoid any service failure due to system degradation as well as ensure the protection of your facility with the latest in aspirating smoke detector (ASD) technology.

If you need to schedule the replacement of your VESDA unit’s filter or if you’d like to discuss upgrading your VESDA unit to the latest technology, feel free to contact the Life Safety Professionals at Integrated Fire Protection by phone at 770.458.8828 or by email at [email protected]