We drive past this house sometimes, and I see this fire alarm on the front. It looks to be some kind of SpectrAlert knock-off. If you know what kind of alarm this is, please let me know. Never seen anyone that has installed an exterior fire alarm on a house before. This is weird. (Image courtesy of Google Street View)
Very large homes can sometimes have commercial type fire alarm systems. I have a horn/strobe on the exterior of my house, it’s mounted above the knox box. It serves two purposes, “hey firefighters the knox box is here!” and two, in the off chance that the three means I have of notification to the fire department fails if anyone is in earshot they will hear it. We are up a long driveway and away from other homes, however! Typiclly what you see is homes such as the one you posted with a sprinkler system has a 110V bell or other sounder on the front of the house to indicate water flow in the sprinkler system. Sometimes you even see them installed off of 110V interconnected smoke detectors.
Many explanations as to why it might be there, my best guess would be the house is sprinkled however, you would typically see a fire department connection below the sounder. So, who knows! And to be honest… who really cares? lol
It also looks like an Amseco product, why you consider it a “knock-off” I don’t know.
I have seen multiple houses in the same neighborhood with something similar. In fact, we already had a discussion about the almost exact same thing a year ago. :lol:
He was wondering why you’d see a commercial-grade fire alarm NA in a residential neighborhood since installations like that are rare. This is a discussion forum about fire alarms, after all. :roll:
I’ve seen a couple houses with that in my city. One had 2 Edwards 6" Adaptabels, which were ceiling mounted to the edge of the roof, and another house had a siren installed on the front of it.