C-TEC’s Marketing Director Andy Green discusses the evolution of its CAST protocol powered life safety systems and explains why C-TEC has remained firmly at the forefront of fire detection and alarm technology for nearly 45 years.
Tell us more about C-TEC’s CAST protocol?
CAST stands for C-TEC Addressable System Technology. It’s our own proprietary life-safety system communication protocol that helps facilitate fast installation, servicing, maintenance and operation. We use it to power and control some of our flagship systems, not only our XFP and ZFP CAST addressable fire detection and alarm systems but also our EVAC-ALERT evacuation alert system and HUSH-PRO residential fire alarm system, all of which can work as stand-alone or combined systems.
What are the key benefits for fire specialists and specifiers?
Fire specialists can be confident they are installing quality standards-compliant systems that offer unprecedented fire protection and the potential to significantly reduce operational and lifetime ownership costs. Specifiers can be secure in the knowledge they are recommending solutions that meet and, in many cases, exceed the requirements of current British and European legislation.
Aside from this, our CAST systems open up opportunities for additional revenue streams. For example, EVAC-ALERT, our evacuation alert system was specifically designed in response to the launch of the BS 8629 product standard in 2019, and, as a result, many fire specialists diversified to meet the rising demand for these systems in new buildings over 18m.
HUSH-PRO, our BS 5839-6 Grade C residential fire solution is another system that’s been widely adopted by progressive companies keen to expand into new markets. As a monitored Grade C system, it’s been hailed as a breakthrough as it not only provides high levels of fire protection but also minimises the costly and massively disruptive false alarms commonplace in student accommodation and other residential dwellings.
It can even be interfaced to a landlord monitoring system and some of our new Cloud-based products to make strategies such as ‘stay put’ or ‘defend in place’ safer. It’s our latest innovation though, CAST-PRO, that’s going to have the biggest benefits for the industry, including end-users.
So what’s so special about CAST-PRO?
CAST-PRO is a combined heat, smoke and CO fire detector with a tone or voice sounder and a VAD – all in one device, the kind of product that to date has mostly been associated with closed protocol systems and larger projects.
It includes some very clever algorithms that are extremely good at ignoring false alarms caused by phenomena such as vaping vapour, steam and incense but at the same time it can pinpoint real fires quickly.
Originally CAST-PRO was only compatible with our ZFP 1-8 loop addressable fire system but we took the decision to also make it available on our XFP 1-2 loop system to effectively bring this technology into the mainstream. This means every site can now benefit from the powerful fire protection this device offers and its other features such as one wiring point instead of two, auto-addressing and a great deal more.
It is a formidable combination we believe will make a real impact on the fire industry and we’ve had some amazing feedback so far.
