Should Smoke Detectors Be in their own Area on an M1?

[RAL]

I posed this question to Elk and this was their reply:
 
"For a UL Listed Installation all Smoke Detectors must be assigned to Area 1."

 
Mike.

 
That's worded in an interesting way.   Reading between the lines, it makes me think that they are not saying that things won't work if you assign a fire zone to areas other than Area 1. And I'll guess that they only did UL testing with fire zones assigned to Area 1, so if it wasn't tested any other way, that's the only configuration you're allowed to use for a UL Listed installation.

 

[mikefamig]

That's worded in an interesting way.   Reading between the lines, it makes me think that they are not saying that things won't work if you assign a fire zone to areas other than Area 1. And I'll guess that they only did UL testing with fire zones assigned to Area 1, so if it wasn't tested any other way, that's the only configuration you're allowed to use for a UL
ListTed installation

 
That makes sense to me. I specifically asked if it was OK to assign the smokes to area 2 and got no answer, just that one sentence that I quoted. I changed all smokes over to area 1 just for peace of mind and it's good to follow convention to avoid confusion in the future.

 

[upstatemike]

Finally got back to playing with this and discovered the following:
 
I can create a user with no authorizations in area 1 and it WILL work to acknowledge/silence fire alarms. The problem is that even though the arm authorization is not checked the user code will still arm the system if entered when there is no fire alarm. This is bad because it cannot disarm the system so folks can accidentally get themselves into a situation that they can't get out of. I'm not sure why the arm authorization even exists if a user code can arm the system regardless of whether that option is selected.
 
I also tried giving the user just the access authorization to see if that would prevent the arming issue. It did but with that authorization checked the code will not work for fire alarms.