I’m pretty sure this topic doesn’t exist but correct me if I’m wrong. This is a topic where you can post any retrofits you find in buildings. The first one I found was a system sensor MASS Non ADA with a trim plate on a 4050 80 Lightplate
Ah yes, that install job. It was from a former user’s old apartment; the horns were originally Simplex 4040s when the building was built in the 70s. Pulls were 4251-20 T-bars, and they had old “wiffle-ball” smoke detectors in the halls, and I believe Gentex smoke units in the apartments. The panel was probably an old Simplex 4208 or similar.
Then in 1991, they upgraded to a Notifier System 5000 panel, removed the 4040s and slapped the MA/SS horn/strobes onto the 4050-80s, all on un-synchronized Slow Whoop, and they also put PA400R mini-horns in the apartments. It was a pretty cheap and kind of lazy upgrade (they also kept the 4251-20s and many of the old Simplex smokes.)
The user said he’d often complain to the landlord that they should install strobes in the apartments as well, seeing as this system is definitely no longer ADA-compliant. We even discussed an ideal upgrade: just replace everything with an modern addressable Notifier system, and replace the MA/SS+4050-80s with SpectrAlert Advance horn/strobes on trim plates, while also putting strobes in the apartments as well!
Here’s a rather proper way to do an alarm retrofit, as done at my old college:
Retrofits should be done how my college does them. In some of the buildings that were recently upgraded, you can’t even tell where horns (flush mount 4050s in some of the buildings) were located and the 2 year old EST3 voice systems blend right in. They even put pieces of cinderblock in the holes that once contained horns and almost everything new is flush mounted. In one of the dorm complexes, there are no remnants of the system that existed before the current (~2008) one, no cover plates, no nothing, so I can’t even guess as to what was in there previously (I spent a year trying).
a lot of these are from schools where it’s low bid super cheap work. a lot of hack jobs from mom & pop installers basically.