anyone here who used to think that all fire alarm systems were only local and didn’t notify the fire department? i used to think so. seeing those sprinkler bells that said “when bell rings call fire department” kind of reinforced that belief.
Well for the better part of the 65 years my high school has been standing it was always local alarm. It wasn’t until the 90’s when the Simplex 4020 was installed that the DACT was installed. All the old Simplex Chevrons in my school say ‘Local Fire Alarm’ on them.
Nope. I always knew of the existence of dialers. I also knew some systems were local because one time an early education center I went by early in the morning had its system going off for hours on end and I later found out it got struck by lightning. There were a lot of houses near by, kinda feel bad about the neighborhood listening to Gentex and TrueAlerts all over the place. The strobes were also all un-synced so it looked like a disco. :lol:
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Thats what my HS has as well. Beige? But yeah there’s a Shed and one of the portables has chevrons. Apparently the school had a BIG 2001 march time system, with 2903 light plates with 2901-9806 horns.
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I knew that fire alarm systems had some way of reaching the fire department since 2nd grade, when I moved and transferred to a school that suffered frequent malicious alarms. It wasn’t until I joined the fire alarm enthusiast community that I learned how they do it, though.
Bet that got expensive quick… They probably installed security cameras quick. They did that at my school, installed cameras in all the hallways. Almost all of them are covered, you can’t get away with shit now… :lol:
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They made it pretty clear to us in elementary school that the fire alarm would notify the fire department automatically. But like Simplex 2903-9101 said, I had no idea how it did it until I started learning about the systems.
Didn’t realize it until about 4th grade. Prior to that, I thought that there was a button hidden in the principal’s office that he pushed that set the alarms off and then pushed it again to shut it off. It wasn’t until 4th grade when I learned that if a station was pulled, the fire department came.
Then in 5th grade, I learned that the principal activated the alarm by keying a station because I didn’t know about the existence of panels yet until the 8th grade when I joined here.
I never saw my elementary and middle school panels. My elementary school had -9219s as the main alarm. My middle school had 4051s.
High school had a Simplex 4010 then replaced by a Simplex 4020.
My elementary and jr-high schools had Standard Electric alarms and pulls. The pulls said “pull for local fire alarm”. I also knew that pulling one would summon the fire department automatically. That’s what the teachers told us. I also saw the fire department come whenever some idiot kid pulled one. Therefore the words “pull for local fire alarm” puzzled me.
If I’m not mistaken, the “LOCAL” was originally used to distinguish building fire alarm systems from street boxes.
What alarms did your schools have?