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22 Non-Compliant ATS Panels on a New Residential Development — and How We Replaced Them

Generator man
1 day ago
2 min read

We were called to a new residential development for a faulty automatic transfer switch.

The panel that had failed was not a one-off oddity. It was an ATS built with non-branded imported control gear, and it was contactor-based. On a site that is still being built, that is a bad morning for everyone involved.

We had to tell the client the panels do not comply with what this kind of building now needs.

Why that panel was never the right product

Life safety and fire-fighting supplies in a residential block are not a place for anonymous contactors in a box.

A contactor ATS holds the load on a coil. A dip, a brown-out or a lost phase can drop it and take the building — or the fire pump, the smoke control, the lifts — with it. Unbranded imported gear makes that worse. No clear standard, no proper support, no confidence that the device in the panel is what the drawing says it is.

On a development that is still on site, the cost of finding that out late is not just one panel. It is every riser that was about to get the same assembly.

What we did instead

We specified our BS 8519:2020 compliant ATS panels — switch-based, with the bypass arrangement the standard expects where occupation depends on life safety and fire-fighting equipment staying available.

Then we had to move.

This was not one replacement. It was a batch of 22 panels. We turned that order round in double-quick time so the build did not sit waiting on a redesign that should have been right first time. We are now on site installing them with the client, so the new assemblies go in as a system — not as 22 crates left in a corridor.

That is the difference between supplying a panel and finishing the job: manufacture, delivery, install, and a panel the inspector can actually look at.

What the client gets now

  • A motorised / switch-type changeover, not a pair of contactors

  • Assemblies built to a published standard, not unbranded imports

  • Bypass so the ATS can be maintained without taking critical plant off

  • Installation by the same company that built the panels

  • A programme that caught a batch error before 22 homes-worth of kit was signed off wrong

The faulty panel was the symptom. The real problem was a specification that should never have been accepted on a residential life safety supply.

If you are building apartments and someone has offered a cheap contactor ATS with no brand on the inside, get it looked at before it is built into 22 cupboards. Replacing one failure is unpleasant. Replacing a whole batch after the plasterers have gone is worse.

We would rather turn 22 compliant panels round quickly than explain a failed fire strategy later.

GES Power Ltd — Compliant ATS panels, built and installed, not imported and hoped for.

 
 
 

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