In my ES, there were sideways-mounted AHWPs :shock: , sounder only MASSes outside without weatherproof bbxs, and to top it off, some of those MASSes were coming out of the ceiling and were mounted on 2 backboxes at once!!! One box was attached to the wall, the other attached to the first box, and the MASS on top of the whole thing! Bad.
Which way was the strobe facing, and did it say “FIRE” sideways?
AHWP’s and MA horns (MASS without the horn) do not have FIRE written on them.
AHWP is a Waterproof horn only AS.
Because I was about to say at my elementary school, we have a vertical AS that does Code-3. Which is hard for me to believe because under the info on Ben’s site, it USED TO say that there was no Code-3 option, so I’m guessing he made a mistake.
The only fire alarm companies I know that do not have Code-3 options in their alarms are Simplex and SpaceAge Electronics.
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On the other hand, A LOT of older simplex panels have coding options- even the 4208! It has a wheel with teeth, like on a Simplex 4623-10.
That sounds like a Veeder-Root alarm. Those are usually near gas stations. Was there a gas station nearby? Those Veeder-Root alarms notify of overflows in the gas tanks.
Was it like this?
Ah, yes! Exactly! And there was a gas station really close. Now, I am beginning to see them at every gas station I go to.
Can a 4208 do Code-3? I know they are capable of doing Slow March Time (20 BPM). I heard a Simplex 4208 system with 4051 horns do that at an elementary school. I wonder if they can do faster March Time rates such as 120 BPM, like the 2001.
It can do fast code 3 if you remove the tabs in a pattern on the coding wheel. And it does 120 bpm March Time if you leave all the tabs on the wheel.
I took this picture after school. Look how close these -9219s are!
(Also, you can see a 4030 from the old system)
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You should get another shot of the one across from the one on the left…
each “zone” on a 4208 trips its own coding wheel. each coding wheel has its own code. I’ve seen some 4208s with a dozen or so coding wheels. lancaster regional medical center had a 4208 system that took up (no lie) an entire wall in a mechanical room with dozens of coding wheels. coded pull stations on a 4208 system are not wired to zones, the pull station’s coding wheel is re-transmitted directly to the gongs via the 4208’s gong relay. heat and smoke detectors that cannot produce a code are wired to a 4208 zone with a coding wheel.
many of the 4208s I see just have one coding wheel with all the notches, so basically you’re just hearing a pulsed bell. one place near me has a small 4208 and the horns aren’t coded, they’re run straight off the gong relay. the coding wheel has all its teeth in place, and is used to flash the red incandescent lights.
I just know that the Simplex 4208 systems at my college had the 4051 horns in Continuous. I don’t know how the lights worked, they were probably just steady. The Liberal Arts and Humanities buildings had their 4208 panels converted into terminal cabinets, all that’s in there now are wires (one was open for a few months after a fire alarm crew inspected it).
And they made it so that a single panel, a Faraday MPC-7000 installed in the H building, would control both buildings. There is still an old Chemtronics heat detector intact in the LA building, but all the other heats (and possibly some System Sensor 2451TH smokes) got replaced with new Faraday addressable smoke detectors. All the 4051/4050-80s (and possibly a Standard 450 horn on the flush-mount light plate) were replaced with VA4 horn/strobes, and the old Simplex 4251-20 pulls (and a round Standard pull) got replaced with addressable Faraday chevrons. The old annunciators wound up like this.
I don’t know why they left them like this. Either they’re now just used for terminal wiring, or they were too lazy to remove them and patch up the holes where they were installed. The Simplex 4208 systems were installed when the buildings were built back in 1978, and the current system was installed around 2005-2007.
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Actually that makes perfect sense. You can see a gap in the wall where a partition would latch. So if anything, the installer did the right thing on that one. Unless of course there is another alarm across the wall.
There is. That’s what I suggested he take a pic of next.
Oh ok. Sorry Dan didn’t see you first post about it.
I don’t know if it is bad, but I saw an MS-51 in Chick-Fil-A behind a trash can. Literally one inch between the can and the pull.
I remember in my elementary school, there was a spectrAlert slapped right on to a 4050-80 in the gym.
I was never in the gym to see it go off, so I don’t know if the light was connected
I saw something like that in a Chinese restaurant nearby. Before they renovated a few years ago there was a 4050-80 in the lobby that had the 4050 horn taken off and replaced with a System sensor MASS, but after the renovations the large backbox was just plated over and a spectralet was placed nearby and is still there today. As for a bad installation job, that same place used to have a Simplex T-bar right under the MASS with clear tape covering the whole thing! :shock: