Central Station Monitoring Design
What is the Central Monitoring Station?
Central monitoring station is a physical center where sophisticated software, computers, and trained personnel are housed to monitor home security systems pertaining to home invasion, fire emergencies, and other related emergency situations. Fire alarm signals, for instance, are sent to this physical location for analysis of the situation and thereafter dispatch responsible emergency responders.
In a home security intrusion, trained personnel at a central monitoring station could call the police promptly and other relevant authorities to attend to your rescue. However, the operator must first verify if the alarm triggered is not a false alarm. The operator would typically call the homeowner whose details reveal the address and the exact device triggered if installed the addressable system designs. Note that our engineers are experts in addressable fire alarm systems.
If the called homeowner does not answer the calls or if anyone furnishes wrong information, law officers would be dispatched either way. Many alarm or security companies do not have central monitoring stations. Instead, hire services from dedicated service providers. Designing and installing a central monitoring station is not that cumbersome when you have the best MEP design partners. Our technicians have designed numerous central station monitoring designs already.
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Traditionally, a signal would be received through what would be known as POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service). These are copper telephone lines that used to and still (in other systems) transmit fire alarm signals to the central station.
Fire alarms are typically sent to a digital alarm communicator which then convert them to a digital format transmittable over a telephone line. The good side of these traditional transmission lines is that they are not affected by power outages. However, modern systems are in place and prioritizes them in all the designs.
The radio network is an alternative to these legacy lines. The network transmits fire alarm signals from your home to the central station. If you are planning to have a monitoring station your customers would be happy with the reliability of the radio network as they promote a faster service than the traditional POTS.
What’s integral to the radio network, however, is the battery backup. Always make sure you have enough and powerful battery. You can’t go cheap when you have lives and value of properties at stake. Home invasions are almost ubiquitous and so a minute’s power outage could be catastrophic to other customers. In some buildings, you may need extra external antennas whereas in other internal antennas are sufficient to transmit the alarm signals.
Radio networks are not only reliable and faster but are also inexpensive. You do not have to worry about monthly telephone fees for signal transmission. So, POTS lines can be financially burdensome to your consumers as you would want to factor such costs in their subscriptions.
More on signal transmission options: a cellular transmission is also an option. As long as your central monitoring station has reliable cellular service, you can rely on this option too over POTS lines. However, cellular transmission incurs monthly cellular fees, which may be the downside to budget-conscious consumers. Like radio networks, cellular transmissions need backup batteries and may also need extra external antennas to efficiently transmit alarm signals.
If all these seem too technical, let a expert come to your rescue. We offer the best central station monitoring design faster than anyone in the industry at reasonably affordable costs. We will weigh these options and advise you about the right option suitable for your central alarm monitoring station. Factors to take into account include cost-effectiveness, efficiency, reliability, and convenient.
POTS lines are however being replaced increasingly. Modern technologies have taken over to ensure a smooth signal transmission and prompt responses of emergency responders.
Architectural Planning of the Central Station Monitoring Design
Perhaps the most demanding action is the architectural planning of your central station monitoring design. Anyway, why would anyone stress over such complex designs when you have at your disposal. Our MEP Engineering scope is broad to the extent of architectural plans for all systems. All the designs we offer we are also well-versed with architectural plans to implement them, and so we can do the same with yours.
The challenging part of architectural planning is that every single detail must conform to UL standards. Which standards are these and why should you care? We’ll elaborate more about UL requirements in the subsequent subtopics.
Worth noting is that every central station monitoring design must be in accordance with UL requirements. We strive for such conformance to the UL requirements. UL standards have been in existence for over 60 years and since then they have been safeguarding the lives of many people.
Fire alarm systems, security companies, central monitoring stations must all comply with these standards. Although UL is a non-profit organization, its standards are enforceable. never compromises these standards in all its designs.
During architectural planning, it is advisable to involve UL inspectors to ensure that everything is built accordingly so as to avoid demolitions thereafter. The process will be smooth when the inspectors are monitoring the progress. It actually saves you exorbitant costs you would lose should the plan found to be faulty. Nevertheless, with our unsurpassed architectural designs for central monitoring stations, we always get 80% approvals and faster than anyone in the industry.
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