For My Birthday I got a Very Old and Rare Faraday 611 AC powered horn. It runs on 240 Volts AC, but since My Family’s House is 110 Volts I run it on 110 Volts which works but it Sucks all the Power out of the House when Running since it requires more power than the House can handle.
I’d love to know why it’s 240VAC when pretty much all AC power in North America is 120VAC: was it made for use in Europe or what? (which is where AC power is 240VAC as standard)
I am aware of that, but the power that comes out of outlets is 120VAC, & thus fire alarm control panels no matter their era are powered by 120VAC (thus meaning on some very old panels that the power output for the notification appliances is also 120VAC). Just in general a device being 240VAC like that is very odd since most AC devices that can be found only go up to 120VAC.
Keep in mind that most FACPs of the Era and present panels were tied directly into a breaker panel not the outlets. It’d make sense that some old AC systems especially general alarm systems could have run on 240.
Well obviously they’re directly wired into the building’s power instead of being plugged into an outlet like with demo panels, but once mains electricity gets inside a structure it’s at 120VAC, no? (though there are also 240VAC outlets installed in some cases too)
Not necessarily. A lot of buildings (my home included) have 240 running in to run appliances. It’ll be split off at the breaker panel. When you plug a generator into a house for example, your feeding it 240. So, 240 is an imput that some ancient panels could’ve ran.
Even weirder is that it looks like it says “240V DC”? I don’t even think this horn was used on a fire alarm system or at least it was on a very special one.
