well, colleges are different than shoe stores and courthouses. you’re right for getting the fire marshal involved for deficient systems in a college, because a college building is usually a residential occupancy, and depending on the number of people living there, that type of system, and the probability that the building has residences on all floors. a courthouse may be a business or assembly occupancy that may only seat its occupants on the ground floor, where the courtroom has the proper number of exits, designed and calculated to handle a predetermined percentage of the building’s occupants during an evacuation. no system is a “cookie cutter” system. a fire system in a college building will be spec’d to meet different criteria than one in a courthouse.
if buildings are sprinklered, that’s a whole different story, because some municipalities allow trade-offs. for example, in some areas, requirements for pull stations are omitted for schools that are fully sprinklered.
I personally believe ALL buildings should have pull stations. Because even if the sprinkler system does activate, there’s still the possibility that for some reason it won’t trigger the alarm. I beliebe Ben himself said it best that should anything automatic fai, the pull station is your “manual override”, almost guarenteed to set off the alarm should the automatic stuff fail.
that is very true. I didn’t necessarily agree with pull station omissions, just stating that sprinklered buildings are sometimes given breaks on alarm requirements.
even if there is a fire in the school and a sprinkler activates but the alarm system doesn’t, the sprinkler will control the fire while those near it will leave.
monthly or quarterly testing of waterflow switches will reveal failures. and I have seen waterflow switches go bad. also, completely off-subject, the most of the failures I’ve written up recently were with Truealert horn/strobes. I had so many fail in the past few weeks. called a tech who used to be my supervisor, and he said that he’s seen many that don’t work, either.
If a water switch cna go bad, whose to say a pull station won’t go bad either?
But, I do agree that pull stations should still be present. There are plenty of cases where you’d want notification of a fire before the automatic systems can detect it. For example, in my HS, there were no smokes in the classrooms…only in the hallways. If a there were a fire in a classroom, say a chemistry lab, I’d hope as someone went for a fire extinguisher, they’d also pull the fire alarm to let everyone know of the potential danger.
The only classrooms that have smoke detectors in them at school are the Science and Computer labs. I think it’s a code in PA but I could be wrong. We also have smoke detectors in hallways, stairs, etc. I can’t see any smokes that are visible in the auditorium or gym. The auditorum has a black ceiling and is hidden so I can’t see anything up there.
MHS has no detectors in classrooms - just in the hallways and other applicable areas, like the gym, library, and auditorium. There aren’t any smokes in the cafeteria, but the cafeteria only has 3 walls, and the other is just open hallway where there are detectors. There is a pull station in the cafeteria though. The kitchen has a pull station and those old metal heat detectors. The MS gym doesn’t have any detectors either, just pull stations, but the lockerooms and the storage areas also have those metal heat detectors.
That has got to be the WORST remodeling I have ever seen. If they were going to upgrade, they should atleast have taken down the 2903 lamp assembly. That is just plain lazy. BTW what code were the 9833s on?
There is a shoe store in a strip mall that has a sprinkler system, but it also has a fire alarm system- an EST system- one pull in each store and one or more NA’s in each store (Genesis’s) (first time i’d ever seen a Genesis)
My dentist’s office has a small FA system with Edwards 278B-1110 pulls and a FireShield panel and Edwards Genesis horn/strobes and strobes. The strange part is the only bit of automatic detection in the system is two duct detectors. There aren’t even sprinklers!
At an assisted living facility, I saw a 4005 panel in plain vincinity. And guess what was on the front of the panel? A little box with the Simplex B Key inside. Now there are some people there who love to touch everything so this is potentially a problem.
Here is another one: BG-10 is opened and the system is not alarming! (jk)
Fire alarm in a store is just a 9806 on a backbox and a red light on the wall. No fire lettering.
A 2903+2901-9806 is missing a big part of the alarm- the 9806 has a cover plate but no horn!
I’ve seen some ceiling mounted Spectras too. They look funny.
These 2 are both in Leominster, Massachusetts and are both in retail stores:
-In a BJ’s Wholesale Club the sidewall fire sprinklers are installed backwards.
-In a Toys ‘R’ Us there is a BG-10 that is behind a stopper and completely blocked by a toy vending machine.
In one of the residence halls here, there is a Cerberus Pyrotronics pull that had a stopper in front of it. The stopper was knocked down, and now completely blocks the pull.