Fire Alarms in Buildings (2.0)

[wiley209]

@wiley209

The main hospital in my city had an electrical room fire last year, so they had to close it for repairs. As part of this, they upgraded to a completely addressable fire alarm system! Before that, it was only a semi-addressable system; a networked Simplex 4100 with quite a few different Simplex panels across the building, even a couple of voice-evac 2001s still in use as auxiliary panels to cover the non-renovated areas still using conventional devices! Said areas largely had 2902-9712 LifeAlarm speakers on 2903-9002 light plates, 4251-20 single-action pulls, conventional TrueAlarm smoke detectors, a few of the old 4259-36 detectors installed with the 2001, a few replacement 2099-9754 and 2099-9756 pulls, a Wheelock ET speaker replacing a failed LifeAlarm… One area renovated in the early 1990s had 2902-9732 LifeAlarm speakers on 4903-9102 light plates, 2098-9201 smoke detectors, and 4251-20 pulls. Several areas renovated in the 1990s had 4903 speaker/strobes, mostly horizontal ones, though one wing had the vertical versions. At least a couple of those areas had 2099-9795 single-action pulls, and one of them had 2098-9201 smoke detector heads on addressable MAPnet bases, while other renovated areas had addressable TrueAlarms, and the emergency wing and the blood lab had 4099-9003 dual-action pulls.
Unusually, a couple areas actually used horns: the radiation therapy wing had Space Age 2DCD+AV32 horn/lights, and the family suites wing had TrueAlert horn/strobes!
I got to hear this system in action once; the areas with the LifeAlarm speaker/lights did the old 2001 chime tone, and the emergency wing with its’ 4903-9150 speaker/strobes sounded a Code-3 version of the old 4100 chime tone! The light plates flashed on 90bpm March Time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKwRJ94KYbM

Now they’ve been upgrading to a Simplex 4100ES voice-evac system. The areas renovated in the 2000s have largely the same devices, while the other areas being fully renovated now have TrueAlert speaker/strobes (most likely 4906-9151s) and what appear to be 4099-9006 dual-action pulls with the LED indicator.

Surprise! Not only did they actually keep several of the old 2903+9712 LifeAlarm speaker/lights, but the new addressable Simplex 4100ES voice-evac system at this hospital is branded by Autocall!

I guess they too decided to hop on the NSG Life Safety/Autocall bandwagon. They’re getting rather popular, especially since you’re pretty much getting Simplex products for a lower cost than directly from JCI (and it helps that NSG Life Safety has a few former JCI/Simplex techs on staff, not surprisingly).
The area where the annunciators were in the main entrance vestibule had a new wall and doorway built leading to a fire command center room, and I could see a big red 4100ES panel in there alongside a newer Space Age graphic annunciator, replacing the Simplex 4603-9101 LCD annunciator and the older graphic annunciator there before construction began after that electrical room fire. It was probably also easier to just put the panel right there.
All the new addressable Autocall initiating devices (A4098-9714 TrueAlarm smoke detectors and A4099-9006 dual-action pull stations) were mounted right where the existing Simplex devices were. The main lobby and coffee shop area did have their LifeAlarm speaker/lights removed in favor of ceiling-mount TrueAlert speaker/strobes, while the hallway nearby (where that pic was taken) still had the LifeAlarm signals intact. I would assume there are now more ADA-compliant strobes throughout the whole hospital than there were before, but it’s interesting they decided to follow grandfather clauses for some of the areas that were renovated and keep the LifeAlarm speaker/lights, probably because of the whole Autocall/Simplex thing.