Should I Use Fire With Verification?

You should not use Fire With Verification, at least in most cases. Using Fire With Verification for your smoke detector zones will make it take longer for a fire alarm to occur. You usually want to use Fire W/O Verification to ensure the fastest emergency response. But there are exceptions.

When a fire zone is set for Fire With Verification, the smoke detector must be activated twice within a short period of time for a fire alarm to occur on the system. The purpose of this setting is to prevent false alarms. For example, if you are cooking some food or someone is smoking a cigarette, then it's possible that the smoke detector might get activated accidentally. By requiring multiple activations, it is much less likely that one of these occurrences will take place. Alternatively, you might also consider using standalone heat detectors in the areas where false alarms are more likely to occur.

But while Fire With Verification might prevent some false alarms, we generally do not recommend using this Response Type. This is because requiring a second activation for a smoke detector will make it take longer for a fire alarm to occur. As a a result, you will get a slower response from a the local fire department if you have central station monitoring. Likewise, it will take longer for you to get an alert about a fire if you have self-monitoring. For that reason, you want to use Fire W/O Verification or Fire No Verification whenever possible.

Time is of the essence when a fire occurs. You need to ensure that an emergency response occurs as soon as possible. This is crucial for preventing loss of life and property damage. Fire With Verification will slow down any emergency response. The only reason to ever use Fire With Verification is to prevent false alarms in areas where you believe smoke detectors may be triggered accidentally. This is not a concern in most cases, so you should not normally use Fire With Verification with your smoke detectors.

You should also consider that Fire With Verification is handled differently on different panels. For example, Honeywell and 2GIG Panels allow users to set verification for smoke detectors individually based on the Response Type for each zone. This means that you can have some fire zones require verification, while others that do not. But on Qolsys Systems like the Qolsys IQ Panel 2 Plus, you must turn on Fire With Verification for the system as a whole. This means that if one smoke detector zone uses Fire With Verification, all of the other fire zones will as well.