Emergency Lighting Testing & Maintenance

BusinessWatch can carry out both your monthly and annual discharge emergency lighting tests in accordance with the recommendations in BS 5266.

On completion of the tests you will be provided with a certificate of test, that details all lights and any noted faults, together with any recommended remedial action. Find out more about our emergency lighting testing below:

How Often Should Emergency Lighting Be Tested?

British Standard 5266 recommends that emergency lighting is tested at the following intervals: –

Monthly– This is a very brief test just to ensure that the emergency lights are working correctly. You also need to check that the neon charging light comes back on when the power is restored.
Annually– In order to test an emergency lighting system, your BusinessWatch engineer will simulate a mains power failure to trigger the emergency lighting system to operate via battery. This involves a discharge test equal to the rated duration of the battery (usually 3 hours), to ensure that all lights remain illuminated for the whole of the rated battery life. On completion the power is restored to recharge the batteries.

Maintenance Of Emergency Lighting

To ensure your emergency lighting system remains fully functional, you should have your system serviced and maintained. BusinessWatch provide a full system maintenance schedule that includes full discharge testing of your lights. Any non-conformances, including damaged lighting, replacement bulbs and batteries, will be identified during your maintenance visit. The test results will be recorded in your fire safety log book and any failures detected must be rectified as soon as possible to ensure your compliance with fire safety legislation.

Your annual discharge test will be undertaken outside normal working hours. If your building is permanently occupied, the test will be phased so only alternate luminaires are tested.

A regular service and maintenance schedule are essential. A competent person should also be appointed to supervise servicing of the system. This person should be given sufficient authority to sign off any work that may be necessary to enable the system to operate correctly.

In order to test an emergency lighting system, we will need to simulate a mains power failure on the normal lighting circuit. The individual luminaries must be simulated. By doing this, we will essentially force the emergency lighting system to operate via the battery supply.