Well then you should see if there are any enthusiasts who live in that area & ask them to try & save those NAs.
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Holy cow! That’s nuts! I agree with you. Someone needs to try to save them.
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Ah, that’s it: the Space Age Electronics/SAE AV-35 (I would provide photos of the document for it but I’m not sure the person who owns it would want me to).
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I think spectronics may be an installer based in Lincoln.
Yes: Lincoln, Nebraska to be exact, & while they don’t make their own products anymore they do offer support for their past ones (which I wish more companies would do).
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Huh, had no idea Spectronics rebranded the original BNG-1. Good find!
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Holy crap! I’ve never seen one of those before
That spectronics ms-51 is a hell of a find, i’ve never seen one
Happy New Year to all! I have two new places to share, one of which has pictures!
Harper Professional Building (Detroit)
I only saw small snippets of the system, and from what I remember, it consisted of Simplex 4251 series pull stations, Gentex SPK4 series speaker/strobes, and one System Sensor SPSWL in the basement.
The Glens of Northville (Northville Township) - This complex, built in 1985, still has an original system! Presumably, the system is the same in all the buildings.
Annunciators/panel:
<Unknown, presumably a Simplex 2001 or one of the first 4001s to be manufactured
Detectors:
Simplex “wiffle-ball” detectors in the common areas
Pull stations:
Simplex 4251-series models in the common areas
Notification appliances:
Simplex 2901-9833 or 2901-9517 horns with trim plates in the common areas
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Heck of a system right there! That Simplex “wiffle-ball” smoke detector is likely an ionization 2098-9544 head on a 2098-9636 base (from what I’ve seen short “wiffle-ball” detectors are ionization while tall ones are photoelectric).
Woah! Never seen that before. No doubt it’s old and rare.
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The horn/strobe is likely the 860 series and is probably a refrigerant leak alarm for the chiller.
The 860 series sounds like a 792/892.
New science museum in my city. System is an FCI Gamewell E3, with L series speaker strobes, and also remote speakers. There are also some vents that open up into the main atrium in some of the different rooms, and those vents have addressable duct detectors, and also have dampers controlled by a relay module.
Also, there is what looks like a wheelock horn strobe outside near the fire dept hookups. I didn’t know these were still made.
That’s likely a 120VAC MT4-115-WH-VFR, which have been produced for some time & may still be actually. They’re likely made for sprinkler signal applications given they’re 120VAC.
My local science museum just opened last year. It has the same Wheelock horn strobe on the outside. The FA system is a Siemens addressable voice evac system with rebranded Wheelock led3 speaker strobes. I also know of a few fairly modern places in my area that have the same Wheelock horn strobe on the outside. One example is my middle school. It was built in 2008 and has one of these on the outside. I know it doesn’t go off for normal fire alarms so it must be a sprinkler alarm. It is odd that they put the one in your picture on the ceiling, even though it’s probably not against code since it’s not a fire alarm.
Oh yeah! That makes sense! The lower pitch ones. The kind that has many lens colors. Thanks for sharing!
VFW Sports Center
Bismarck, ND
(Warning long post)
This building was first opened in 1986 as a hockey and curling center with one hockey sheet and one curling sheet. An additional sheet of ice for hockey was added in 1999. The components of the old system reflect this. This year, a third sheet of ice for hockey was added. They redid the entire system at this time. The components of the new system reflect this.
Old system:
Panel: Unknown Simplex conventional panel of some sort from 1986.
Annunciator: Simplex 4300 series annunciator with 16 zone capability. Only around 10-12 zones were used.
Notification Appliances: Simplex 2903 flush mount light plates with 2901-9838 horns in the original area. The 1999 area had 4903 mechanical horn strobes.
Pull stations: The older area had Simplex 4251-20 pull stations. Most were in break glass stoppers that had a metal tool to break the glass chained and mounted to the side. There were a couple 4251-30’s. The newer area had newer Simplex conventional pull stations.
Smoke and heat detectors: I don’t recall ever seeing any smoke or heat detectors but there must have been at least a couple somewhere. There were some conventional Simplex duct detectors that I saw.
New System
Panel: Autocall 4100ES
Annunciator: This was very weird. They actually never uninstalled the old one and never installed a new one. It’s just sitting there disconnected with electrical tape holding it shut. I have a feeling that they might not be fully done with the install and may still need to fix this.
Notification Appliances: Red Conventional Autocall TrueAlert speaker strobes (both ceiling and wall mount). They actually put a lot of the speaker strobes where the old horn strobes were using 2903 adapter plates. In some areas they needed more coverage so they covered up the old 2903 back boxes with blank white plates and put speaker strobes on the ceiling. One example of this is in the main arena (the original sheet from 1986). With the old system, there were only 6 horn/lights in the whole room. That probably wasn’t even enough coverage when they had the horns, considering how loud the events get (they have a literal train horn for when they score goals). With the quiet speaker strobes, that certainly wasn’t going to work. They ended up adding a total of 30 ceiling mount speaker strobes throughout the room. I do genuinely hope that they have an audio system cutoff because there is no way that the FA speakers are going to be able to get over the insane noise in there and with the audio system on.
Pull Stations: Addressable dual action Autocall T-bars with the led on the front. They all have STI stoppers on them.
Smoke and Heat detectors: They have a few addressable TrueAlarm smoke detectors. They also have an addressable heat detector in the concession stand which is weird considering that the entire building has a fire sprinkler system. Additionally, there are some addressable duct detectors that took the place of conventional ones.
I was expecting to see a system upgrade considering the major construction and old system, but this still surprised me. I was expecting to see a Siemens system because they are used at pretty much every government owned building in that town (schools, parks, recreation centers, government offices, museums, etc.).
Autocall has been taking over my area recently. They have been pretty much every new install in the past year (including a new school in my district- which has used almost exclusively Simplex systems for the past few decades). I’m really starting to wonder about my new high school which will be finished in in just over half a year. I’m not used to seeing the Autocall logo where the Simplex logo should be so it’s still always shocking to go into a new building that has a Simplex system at first glance but it turns out to be an Autocall system. It even feels weird to just say the name (especially for a device). For example, I can’t tell you how many times I accidentally typed Simplex instead of Autocall when I was writing this.
Side Note: One other thing that I have noticed is that the Autocall systems in my area seem to be sticking to conventional notification appliances while the Simplex systems seem to be going for the fancier TrueAlertES notification appliances.
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Apple Store (Boylston Street) - Boston, MA
This is one of the few Apple Stores that’s in its own building (which is directly owned by Apple) instead of in a mall.
Panel: EST3 (annunciator near entrance)
Pulls: Sigcom SG-32 series rebranded by R.B. Allen (R.B. Allen is an EST distributor that serves most or all of New England.)
Signals: Genesis horn/strobes
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Noodles and co - KC
panel- either a EST 2 or 3
N/As- Genesis’s
pull stations- one single siga
smokes- none