I’m pretty sure my school has some code violations.
Note: My school has a Simplex 4100u voice evacuation system. It was built in 2008 with additions in 2009 and 2018.
The classrooms in the original part of the building do not have any signals in them. This makes it extremely hard to tell that the alarm is going off when the classroom’s door is closed. The classroom’s in the additions are slightly better because they have remote strobes but they are still not perfect.
In the gym, the sound for the voice evac is unreliable. Dispite there being 17 speaker strobes throughout the gym, the message, including the whoop tone, is still barely audible when just played through the speaker strobes and people are talking. To help with this, they tied the voice evac audio into the gym’s sound system. The problem with this is that when the sound system is turned off or turned down, it will not play the message. (This may also be a problem in the cafeteria because they have the same setup with 4 speaker strobes and the audio tied into the sound system but I have no idea because the sound system is never turned on.) There is also the fact that the sound systems have no backup power like the FA system does.
All of the strobes in the individual areas are synchronized with each other, but the different areas are not synchronized with each other. For example, all of the strobes in the gym are synchronized together and all of the strobes in the hallways outside of the gym are synchronized with each other but the strobes in the gym are not synchronized with the ones in the hallway outside of the gym even though they are very easy viewed at the same time.
In my Tech-ec classroom, the speaker strobe is in the corner of the room right next to a cabinet. The cabinet blocks the strobe from covering probably about 25% of the room.
How to solve the problems:
The easiest way to solve this problem would be to connect the voice evac audio to the school’s pa speakers. All of the rooms in the school, including many that do not have fire alarm signals, have pa speakers. The best way to solve this problem would be to put more speaker strobes in the needed places.
The best way to solve this problem would be to use control modules ore some other way to get the sound systems to automatically power on and turn to a loud enough volume. They should also turn all of the speaker strobes in the gym to the maximum wattage to increase the volume. Of this is not possible because of the amplifiers not being powerful enough, they should find another way to solve the problem or get more amplifiers.
They should make sure that all of the 4009 panels are being used as slave panels and are following the 4100u’s master sync. I’m guessing that the 4100u is just telling them to go off and they are all just outputting their own sync.
The cabinet should be moved so that the strobe can cover the entire room.
Another possibility to solve the problem of the speakers not being loud enough in the gym is to have a relay cut off the sound system (not the fire alarm speakers) and use Wheelock weatherproof speaker strobes, as they go up to 8 watts, and the strobes can run off of smartsync. If it’s a voice evac system, there should really be speaker strobes in all of the classrooms.
The system could be grandfathered in. So they don’t need to upgrade audibility unless FD or AHJ comes around and says they need to. I’ve been seeing this a lot in apartments where they want the system upgraded so people can hear them from the bedroom. I don’t see it a lot in places like schools, though.
Unfortunatley this is legal in the US. In Canada, where I live, they are not allowed to use FA devices for any other things. So speaker systems here are exclusivley to the FACP/AMP, to prevent problems like this for example.
Not sure what the code in the US is regarding this, but in Canada, strobes that are visible to each other have to be synced up. So I can see this as being legal, as the gym and hallways are separated by a fire door usually and are separate areas. It would be nice to have the entire building synced up, which is why I like using Edwards stuff for these types of things. Their panels have sync capabilities built into their panel for the Genesis devices, so you don’t need to add extra sync modules. I think Simplex works the same way with the TrueAlert devices.
The system is not grandfathered in. This is the original system from when the school was built in 2008. I think the installers probably didn’t know a whole lot about voice evac back then because it was not very common in schools in 2008.
That was just an example about the strobes. There are some places in the hallways where strobes only a few feet from each other are not in sync (particularly where the additions meet the original part of the building but also in other areas).
A properly-configured sound system, upon an alarm, would turn itself on and play at a pre-configured emergency volume level.
This would need to be worked out with both JCI/Simplex and the sound system vendor.
I’m aware of multiple facilities - mainly airports - where the fire alarm is wired into the overhead page to augment the speaker/strobes, so your school would not be unprecedented if it did this.
@EdwardsFan If I’m not mistaken, Terminal 1 at Toronto Pearson Airport has the fire alarm wired into the overhead page in the passenger areas - they don’t have any speaker/strobes (but they have plenty of remote strobes) and they appear to only have one set of speakers (unlike Terminal 3, which has two sets of speakers, one for overhead page and one for fire alarm).
Maybe it was approved by the AHJ then? As they don’t really play music over it, so using it just for announcements and Fire Alarm might be ok. Next time I’m at Terminal 1 I’ll have to take a closer look.
my former HS has a ton. The most notable one is two hallway fire doors with disconnected closer mechanisms and two missing sets of fire doors on the third floor stairway landings. (they’re not tied in with the fire alarm system, but the school is working on raising money for new fire doors with a normally closed relay tied into the Simplex 4247-2 FACP that disables the magnets upon activation of a fire alarm, as well as more conventional AC voltage smoke detectors for automatic activation; they already have a relay for the access control system. The school should also invest in an HVAC and elevator disable relay.) another one is actually multiple fire alarm fails such as a set of signaling devices painted over, one 4050 in the men’s basketball locker room has a busted grill, and two 4050s that are falling off the back boxes.
since that school is so broke (even for a legendary private high school), the city of Akron probably has no choice, but to condemn the main building of LeBron James’s HS and have the rear part imploded (the building is built on a hillside). The front part will be preserved and turned into a museum.
that’s the reason I transferred to a more up-to-date public high school in the same city. I was also exposed to too much asbestos, which was giving me sinus infections.
Yeah my district’s current high school from 1957 has a ton of problems too and is literally starting to fall into the ground. They are working on building a new high school that is supposed to open in a little less than a year.
