Your Tank Alarm Solution, Even Just Out of Ear Shot!

In fact OFTEC regulations recommend that one should be installed as standard on all new tanks.

If you haven’t already, you should be considering a fuel tank alarm firstly for your own conveience. When the tank gets close to empty, a low level alarm will sound, prompting you to contact your supplier and arrange a fuel delivery. This prevents any downtime caused if you ran out and couldn’t run your vehicles or machinery.

Environmental clean-up costs are another big reason. If you don’t have an overfill alarm to alert you your tank’s getting full or a bund alarm to alert you to a potential leak in your inner tank then you may end with a big mess and clean-up bill!

When you hear the fuel tank alarm sounding you can act on it immediately before it becomes a problem – a perfect solution!. But what if you can’t hear it? You wouldn’t set your alarm clock for work and then leave it in the kitchen out of ear shot and expect it to wake you up!

Ok, so let’s say you are the Transport Manager of a small haulage company; you sit in the office and your fuel tank with a level alarm is installed in the yard with several building walls between you. Unlike an alarm clock, you don’t have the luxury in deciding to put the fuel tank right next to you.

In the majority of scenarios this wouldn’t really matter. The CTS tank alarm sounder is 90db, which according to the magic of Google is as loud as a motorcycle at 25ft, a power mower and a Boeing 737 one mile away. So pretty loud! Also, usually someone on site will be in ear shot of the alarm sounding. For example, if a low level has been detected it’s likely because someone is dispensing from the tank, or a high level because the fuel supplier is there refilling the tank and it’s almost full.

However, if there is a chance there may not always be someone in ear shot of the tank for a considerable amount of time, or you can’t rely on your drivers to not mute the alarm without telling you it went off, you may not be able to act as quickly as you would like. So what can you do about it?

Big organisations such as a hospital or a university are likely to have their fuel tank alarm programmed to a sophisticated business management system that monitors all on site electronics and therefore have this covered. For the smaller company, a remote fuel tank alarm solution in the range of £150 is much more fitting.

The CTS mains powered tank alarms are available with a relay, which can be used to connect it to another alarm acting as a remote warning device where you are sitting! You can position the second remote tank alarm up to 100m away from the other, inside your office for example, meaning that you don’t have to be in sight/ear shot of the tank to be alerted to a problem. The fail-safe here is that the two alarms act independently from one another, meaning that if your driver mutes the one at the tank without telling you, the other will continue to sound until you choose to mute it.

If you are concerned that you may not always hear your fuel tank alarm immediately, a second, cost effective mains powered single zone alarm would do the trick to act as a remote fuel tank level warning device!