Smoke Alarms

If you are creating a venue then you need to allow for the use of smoke or haze machines with the fire alarm so that disco lighting can be seen properly. Everywhere effect lighting is used, from nightclubs, to stage shows, to TV music shows, haze or smoke is used to allow the lighting effects to be seen in the air. Without it there are simply no beams of light you can see from the lights or lasers. The catch is that smoke and haze machines can occasionally set off some sensitive fire alarms.

The Basics

Haze machines are not safe with any smoke detector.  Good haze machines (proper compressor based haze machines) will produce a particle size much smaller than that from a generic smoke machine, but they can still trigger generic smoke detectors (the risk is lower, but it can still happen).

Smoke and haze machine friendly smoke detectors are available.  They are often based on heat rise detection or heat rise detection combined with other detection methods.

Resources

Resources regarding haze friendly smoke alarm systems:

http://www.safelincs-forum.co.uk/topic/915-smoke-alarms-and-disco-smoke-machines/