I have been wondering, because I saw a post where that’s the case in schools.
In my area, that’s the case in a lot of buildings, including schools. Despite this, they are still using horn strobes in all of the small buildings in my area that do not require voice evac because of the high cost of voice evac.
Looks like new school construction requires speaker/strobes on a national-level, but still don’t know 100 percent.
Now, I wonder what the minimum amount of floors would be where a voice-evacuation system is required. I know now that very-mixed-use buildings with multiple floors require them. Especially a lot of floors.
As far as I know they’re recommending (but not prohibiting) voice evacuation systems to be installed in new schools and in upgrades. When I checked my county codes it’s only specific that it has to be an addressable system and cannot be conventional.
From what I remember anything over a few hundred people in a building at the same time does need a voice evacuation system so it’s possible speaker strobes are required (or perhaps they can use the announcement system for that as well) but for example on the outside it would be a good idea to still have horn strobes.
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I made this thread, because it looks like there was a sudden code change in the 2020s. Possibly as recent as 2022.
The NFPA 72 documentation from 2022 is the latest edition currently although it was listed over 2 decades ago that voice evacuation should be a requirement.
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What buildings did they want it to be a requirement for?
It was originally mainly high rise buildings and ones that would have at least a few hundred people in it. Although with the expansion and more development of the voice evacuation systems has it expanded to education institutions as well although probably not 100% required.
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In my area, all schools, no matter the size must now have voice evac. For example, 3 new elementary schools that have a capacities of around 300 students were just built in my area. They all have voice evac. No elementary schools in my area previously had voice evac.
According to this QRFS post, the 300 occupant rule for voice evacuation systems only applies to “assembly occupancies,” not all buildings. Educational occupancies are required to have voice evacuation systems if they have over 100 occupants, while other occupancy types such as business occupancies have no such requirement.
Although this QRFS post is a few years old, horn strobes continue to be installed in many commercial buildings, so it is very unlikely that they were banned since then.
This post is only a few hours old lol.
No… NFPA 72 will specify how to put a voice evacuation/MNS system if a code requires it. You’d need to reference NFPA 101 or IBC/IFC to specify whether a particular occupancy requires it.
IDK. It may depend per jurisdiction. For example, in Nebraska from what i heard from my SD’s fire alarm tech, he said that Nebraska just adopted code from the mid 2010s.
My area is weird like that too. For example, we don’t require systems to use temporal 3 coding and still allow audible silence but we do still require voice evac in many buildings (including schools).
For example, I think audible silence is still allowed here.
in Canada, schools here are still using Horn/Strobes. Only schools I’ve seen with speaker strobes is in the GTA, as their schools are far larger. But all the ones in my area have normal systems, they have to be single stage according to code.
Do voice evacuation systems there would have to be approved by government before they can be installed in the buildings?