Weekly fire alarm test record. A printable log for the routine fire alarm test — which call point was used, whether the sounders were heard everywhere, and what was wrong if anything was.

Testing the alarm weekly from a different call point is the convention BS 5839-1 describes for most systems, and the point of rotating is that a system tested from the same point for a year is a system where only that point has been proved. The sheet carries a rotation column for exactly that reason.

What the test is really checking is audibility, not the panel. A sounder that cannot be heard in a plant room, a toilet block or over a machine is a part of the building where nobody will know the alarm has gone off — so the sheet asks where it could not be heard rather than offering a tick for 'audible'.

The entry people forget is the reset. A test that leaves the panel in fault or with a zone disabled, and a log that does not record the panel being returned to normal, is how a building spends a fortnight with its detection partly off. The last column on the sheet is the panel left normal, and it is a signature rather than a tick.

The interval, the required sound levels and what the system was installed to achieve are not written into this sheet. They come from the standard the system was designed to, the fire risk assessment and the maintenance regime for that building, and they are the kind of thing that differs between premises and changes over time.