Not sure if many of you on the forums do fire alarms, but I thought let me get it started. I am intrigued by some of the standards that they go for over here in SA. The cable we use is FR20 soft flexible cable a lot easier to work with than FP200. All the cables should be put in conduit whether it be PVC or Bosal. There is no pyro or FP200 used over here. The panels that are common here are Ziton ZP3 & Aritech FP2000 for the addressable stuff. The conventional are either Aritech, Ziton or mainly local stuff from Technoswitch. Not bad panels.

From a non techinal public area point of view, what the major differences between BS5839 and whatever the standard is you work to over there

We work to SANS 10139 which has a lot of british standards in it. We are not insurance driven with grades etc over here so some do just do what they want. We recently took over and redone a 4 story warehouse factory building that was threatend to get shut down as the owner had not met the standards for his fire alarm. He had a DSC alarm panel doing his security and the installer thought it would be easier to install 12vdc smoke detectors to that. All run in 8core. (Rough) Now its up to standard with proper Apollo detectors and Fire Rays.

I dream of the day........

they do issue notices to places if they are not upto standard, but its usually the insurance company that highlights the risk.

This wasnt the insurance company. This was the fire brigade. The building is like one of these sweat shops in the city centre so a high risk. The fire service dont mess over here. 31 days to comply or goodbye to your business. If only the police were like that.