I think Dan said that Type 3 has LifeAlarm speakers on 2903 plates.
No. Type 3 is in the RACC (now the SEFCU Arena) which was built in 1992. They do have SOME lifealarm speakers installed, but some are the flush-mount version, and there are VERY few strobes (it was built in 1992). I have a pic of one of the speakers. but once school lets out for the summer and I start working again, I’ll go by and get more pics.
Health and Human Services had an alarm today. I know it wasn’t planned because the FD and campus police were there. IDK what happened, but I intend to find out once they update the police log (which unfortunately may not be for a while)…
An alarm-filled day today! I’ll tell you all about it when I get home later tonight.
Anyway, IDK if what happened today were drills or not (I know one definately wasn’t), but I’ll post them here anyway.
As I got out of my car to go to my spanish class, I hear code-3 start up. I thought maybe it was a drill, but 10 minutes goes by and it’s still going off. So, I decided to look for the presence of fire trucks, and there weren’t any as far as I could see. Well, since the alarm was still going off, I decided to go shoot a short vid of the outdoor AS. Not long after I start filming they shut it off.
This was interesting because they installed part of the ASs in an outdoor hallway, and the only seperation between those and the humanities building is a pair of double doors, and I’ll tell you, you could hear those ASs blaring on the other side of the humanities building.
Anyway, later, as I was leaving my history class in the earth science building (how ironic), I heard fire truck sirens, not having the time to investigate, I headed over to the campus center to grab some gub, and as I start to go downstairs into the extension, what do I hear? Bells ringing like crazy. Evidentally, the system had tripped AGAIN. I again take the opportunity to shoot a 10 second vid of the alarm going off. It was reset about 5 minutes later.
Now, here’s something interesting. On the first day of classes of this semester, I was caught up in another alarm but over in the bookstore. When they reset the system, I noticed the strobe on the lone bell/strobe in the atrium wasn’t flashing. I thought maybe it was just that one alarm, but after seeing the same thing over on the food court side today, I noticed it’s the whole strobe NAC that does it. Lately, every time they reset the system, they don’t silence it. Well, everyone here knows that it takes about a minute for 4100s and similiar systems to reset itself. Well, for some reason, during the resetting process, the strobes stop flashing, but the bells continue to ring. Then once the system reset is complete, the bells shut off and the system is once again normal. Kinda screwey.
I do have the vids, but I don’t plan on posting them until I find out whether or not a: was the alarm in the social sciences building a drill or not, and b: what caused the campus center extension alarm. That could take up to 2 weeks, but IDK how often they update the police log. I’d like to say every 2 weeks and it’s the 2nd week right now, so we’ll just have to wait and see…
A bit of a coincidence today: I was at work, and so was Simplex! Like you see in that library photo on the previous page, they went around the whole building today activating all the initiating devices. My office is near the remote annunciator out front, so I heard it go off MANY times today. But that’s all that went off because they disabled everything, and they always acknowledged it after the first couple of pulses. I even helped the guy though (sort of): they have a list of all the activation devices and their corresponding address. Well, when it activates, the guy at the panel acknowledges it and radios back the device address, and the guy doing the testing checks it off on the list. Well, somehow, he missed device M1-75 and he was looking for it. He knew it was a smoke detector so he came back into the office and began looking in the individual offices for detectors, and me, knowing there wasn’t any in them, politely said, “There’s no more in here.” And he replied, “That’s what I thought…”
I came in at 10:00 and I left at 2:30 and they were still doing testing. Hopefully they fix whatever’s causing the system to be in trouble too…
Just a general update: I’ve decided that all the systems (w/ the exception of the campus center extension) are actually 4120s. My main reason for the decision is that all the remote voice evac annunciators have 4120 labels on them. The only ones that don’t are the two in the campus center as one has a 4100 label on it, and the other one doesn’t have any label (and by label, I mean http://www.dan.calvinet.com/Annunciator_Label.JPG this, located at the bottom of the panel).
I know you only cover alarms on the podium but i am curious about what alarms are in the dorms
There’s a 5-year project going on that involves upgrading all of the alarm systems in the dorms. All the low-rise dorms used to have Edwards 892s (presumeably electromechanical) and classic pull stations, as for the towers, it’s a mix. I’ve seen the 892s installed there as well, but I’ve also seen these installed:
And no, they’re NOT speakers, they’re vibratory horns. These particular ones can be found in the Dutch Quad tower, which is also currently undergoing an upgrade. Here’s a vid of those alarms:
All the low-rise dorms take the whole summer to upgrade, but it takes the towers (21-stories) years to complete, since the only time they can work on the system is over the summer when there’s no one there. All the dorms have siemens systems. Some have MXLs, but the latest dorms to be upgraded are getting Firefinders.
Incase you didn’t notice already, the far majority of the dorms have Siemens systems (a few have Simplex though) while Simplex basically covers the Podium. The whole campus used to be Edwards. Dorms getting as mentioned above, academic buildings having single-stroke bells. Most of the old systems, BTW, used to be Edwards 5527Bs:
The towers had something else. IDK what, but I do know it’s 3 floors per zone.
We have those alarms too at our school! Some of them are strobe-less, and some have strobes.
Also, just to note, this is the 4th year of the 5 year plan, so as you can imagine, about 1/2 of the dorms are already upgraded. After this summer, the whole project will be about 2/3-3/4 complete.
Weatherdan - I remember way back that you said you were going to try very hard to get one or more of those alarms this summer. Is that still the case?
Well, I never said “or more”, but I did say I’d try hard to get one of those, and I still intend too. I’m frequently checking the Dutch Quad tower (which is where those are installed) and Indian Quad for any alarms. SO far, I’ve come up empty, but I’ve looked through the windows and all the old alarms are still installed (in both locations), so nothing’s happened yet…
Now that the police log works again, it turns out the cause was burnt popcorn.
[quote] As I got out of my car to go to my spanish class, I hear code-3 start up. I thought maybe it was a drill, but 10 minutes goes by and it's still going off. So, I decided to look for the presence of fire trucks, and there weren't any as far as I could see. [/quote]It wasn’t a drill.
[quote] Anyway, later, as I was leaving my history class in the earth science building (how ironic), I heard fire truck sirens, not having the time to investigate, I headed over to the campus center to grab some gub, and as I start to go downstairs into the extension, what do I hear? Bells ringing like crazy. Evidentally, the system had tripped AGAIN. I again take the opportunity to shoot a 10 second vid of the alarm going off. It was reset about 5 minutes later. [/quote]Again, also not a drill, although that was known. Turns out it went off again the next day.
Anyway, I guess the officer who responded to the alarms was lazy as he never bothered to write down any notes or causes.
Education building had an alarm today at around noon. I believe it was unplanned because of a: the time, and b: today was finals testing day, and no drills are supposed to be conducted while finals are going on. I’ll have to see what happened in the police log in a couple of weeks.
Do you think it had something to do with something triggering the smokes?
Well, my mistake, it was a drill because it wasn’t mentioned in the police log.
However, that following Monday, the chemistry building had an unexpected alarm, but unfortunately, IDK what caused it because the police log doesn’t say!
Maybe they blew something up in the chemistry lab? :mrgreen:
Oh, and do you like in a dorm?
Huh???
I think she means “do you LIVE in a dorm.” I for one don’t think you do