Emergency Lighting And Exit Signs

Emergency lighting is the system in a building that does nothing at all until the day it matters. Which is exactly why it gets neglected.

In an apartment building or a commercial property, it is the difference between people leaving a dark stairwell safely and people not.

What the system is

Two things, working together.

Exit signs mark the way out and stay illuminated. Emergency luminaires light the path to get there, and they run from their own battery when mains power fails.

Both are meant to run for a defined period after the power goes, which means every fitting has a battery, and batteries are consumables.

How it gets tested

The system is tested on a regular cycle, and the test does the same thing every time. Cut the mains supply to the fittings, confirm every one of them illuminates, leave them running for the required duration, and confirm they are still lit at the end.

That last part is what catches the failures. A fitting that comes on and dies after ten minutes has failed, and it will look perfectly fine in a quick visual check.

The results go in a log, and the log is what a fire safety statement is built on. A test with no record is a test that did not happen as far as anyone assessing the building is concerned.

Where they fail

Batteries. The most common failure by a wide margin. They degrade over years, and the fitting keeps its charging light on while holding almost no capacity. Nothing about its appearance changes.

Lamps and drivers. Older fluorescent fittings fail more often than LED ones, which is part of the argument for replacing rather than repeating repairs on an ageing system.

Coverage gaps. A building gets renovated, a wall moves, a corridor changes, and the lighting layout no longer matches the escape path. The fittings all work and the path is not covered.

Signs that are not visible. An exit sign obscured by a new sign, a plant, a piece of art or a bulkhead added during a refurbishment. Working perfectly, and nobody can see it.

Fittings disconnected during other work. This one happens constantly. A trade isolates a circuit to do something else and does not restore it, and the fitting sits dead until the next test.

Why repeated repairs cost more than replacement

On an older system, each test finds another handful of failures. Each one is a call-out and a part.

Across a year that adds up to more than replacing the ageing fittings would have cost, and the building still has an old system. Where a system is reaching the end of its life, a staged replacement is usually cheaper than continuing to patch it.

Modern fittings with self-testing capability also reduce the labour on every subsequent test cycle.

What a building manager should hold

A current log with the dates, the results and what was rectified. A layout showing where the fittings are, so coverage can be checked against the escape path rather than assumed.

And a note of when the fittings were installed, because that predicts when the batteries will start failing in numbers.

The thing worth doing after any refurbishment

Recheck the coverage. Any work that moves a wall, changes a corridor or alters the escape path can leave the lighting layout wrong even though nothing was touched.

It is a short check and it is the most common gap we find.

We carry out testing, repairs and staged replacement under electrical work for managed buildings. If a test is due or a report has come back with a list, send it through.