I’ll be graduating before the renovations the sign and bell are not going anywhere fast while I’m still at the school. Also I’m salty that the school is making much needed renovations, expansions and upgrades that would have been amazing too have.
Alright: not sure I get that last part but alright. Best of luck!
I think they are saying that they don’t like the fact that their school will be getting its renovations and upgrades after they graduate.
Oh, alright, yeah. Still: at least they should hopefully be in just the right place to save those devices when all of that does happen!
Yesterday, I had lunch with some colleagues at a restaurant near my workplace. The building appears to have a Potter PFC-9000 system, judging from the Potter-branded Mircom annunciator in the main entrance (this system is most likely replacing an Edwards Custom 6500 as the Potter annunciator is mounted over an old Edwards annunciator):
The signals are mainly 6” Edwards 343D Adaptabels. The men’s washroom has a Notifier KMS-6-24A bell paired with a System Sensor SpectrAlert Advance strobe:
The pull stations are Edwards 270-SPOs. Most of the pull stations I saw are of a rather rare variant—they feature the old Edwards logo and have bilingual lettering (despite bilingual 270s being abundant in my area, I’ve seen older versions only a handful of times):
Interestingly, according to another collector, the levers on older bilingual 270s are made of plastic. I had long wondered why the lever on these pull stations is of a darker shade than the body (this isn’t the case with English- or French-only versions). While the difference isn’t particularly obvious in the photo, it is noticeable in person.
I also saw a rather uncommon English-only 270-SPO with unpainted stripes:
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A very interesting system indeed, especially the 270s & the bell & remote strobe combination (surprised more of the latter aren’t seen in Canada given how common bells are in the country, though the same seemingly can’t really be said for strobes so maybe that’s why).
Strobes are far from being rare, but I think that there are two major reasons explaining why these types of setups aren’t more common (I’m generalizing here, so this may not be representative of practices throughout the country):
- Bells were more commonly used in older installations, prior to the adoption of current strobe requirements. Given that these requirements are often not retroactive, many older systems that only use bells remain in service.
- When an older system undergoes a full upgrade, it’s likely easier and cheaper to replace bells with two-wire horn/strobes than to keep existing bells and to add strobes; if the bells are coded, the strobes would need to be on separate circuits.
I typically see bells paired with strobes in buildings that have undergone an expansion or a partial renovation: bells are used in the new or renovated parts to match the signals in the rest of the building, and strobes are added in the new or renovated part to meet current requirements. A local mall, for instance, has an early ‘90s Notifier system with bells (no strobes); when the food court was moved to a new location a few years ago, Notifier KMS bells and System Sensor L-Series strobes were installed in the new food court, but the remainder of the system remained untouched.
In this case, the washroom appears to have been remodelled at some point in the last decade, and I doubt that it originally had a bell. Those signals seem like a particularly important addition as there are two doors between the hallway and the washroom; I can’t imagine that the bells from the hallway would be audible in there.
Mayport Navy Exchange
N/As: Wheelock RSS
Wheelock WST Strobes
Wheelock EHS-DL1
Wheelock NS
System Sensor SpectrAlert Classic (In the furniture section)
Pull Stations: Gamewell Centuries under STI Stopper IIs
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Fire Alarms at Boscov’s at Colonie Square in Albany County, NY:
Wheelock NS-24110W (Fixed 110CD)
Wheelock NS-241575W (Fixed 15/75CD)
System Sensor PC2RLED (15, 30, 75, 95, 115, 150, 177CD selectable)
System Sensor SCRLED (15, 30, 75, 95, 115, 150, 177CD selectable)
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Fire Alarms at Macy’s Colonie Square Albany County, NY
Wheelock EHS-DL1 (Very dim NON ADA 1.5CD Strobe)
EST GCFR-HDVM (15, 30, 75, 95CD selectable)
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Pet Smart in Jacksonville, FL
This location has quite an interesting system
Notification Appliances:
Gentex SHG
Wheelock Exceder
Pull Stations:
Fire-Lite BG-12
National Guardian Metal T-Bar
Edwards 276B
Annunciator: Silent Knight SK 5235
Pictures:
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That one 9838 sure has seen better days hasn’t it? (nice to see such a vintage system still in service though regardless)
It does! Wonder how it ended up with such an interesting combination of devices (wouldn’t surprise me if the SHGs are original to the system since I believe Gentex devices were commonly installed with Silent Knight panels, at least up until Honeywell acquired the latter: then they started being installed with System Sensor signals instead since Honeywell owns SS too).
Going by the SK-5235 the panel is likely an SK-5208 as that’s supposedly the only panel the former is meant to be used with.
Does that place have any automatic detectors to speak of? (sprinklers too?)
I saw some sprinklers, but no detectors.
Earth Lore (Plymouth, MI)
Annunciators/panel/detectors: Unknown
Pull stations:
<Alarm Industry Products AI270-SPO units
Notification appliances:
<System Sensor SpectrAlert P1224MCR horn/strobes
All the devices are likely from circa 1997, as this is the same year the business was established.
Just a variety of devices in my hometown…
Couch light (?) and Faraday Bell (?) at one of the elementary schools I attended. Probably the coolest system out of all the elementary schools in the district. I saw some (probably Faraday) chevron pulls in other pictures of this school. There was a 278 pull too, so I’m guessing there’s an EST system there now.
System Sensor L-Series, replacing an Edwards 892-2B that makes up most of the signals at the middle school I attended.
Silent Knight 5208 panel in some building.
Simplex 2903 light/strobe plate and a “Whiffle Ball” smoke detector at the main town library. The library was recently renovated and it looks like the old signals are still there. A recent expansion has RSG T-bars and L-series horn/strobes. Unsure of the panel, if they kept it, maybe a 4001 or small 4002.
Simplex 2904 Light/Strobe (?) and 2901-9838 horn outside at the same library. These were replaced with a System Sensor P2RK in 2022 (when the expansion was built).
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Taylor Town Trade Center (Taylor, MI)
Annunciators/panel:
<Silent Knight SKE-450 series voice-evacuation unit with power supply boxes and a Honeywell 6160CR annunciator
Detectors:
<None noticed
Pull stations:
<One NBG-12 unit at the main entrance
Notification appliances:
<One red wall-mount System Sensor SP2R-series speaker/strobe at the main entrance
<White ceiling-mount System Sensor SP2C-series speaker/strobes throughout the rest of the building
1804 Hillcrest park apartment building
Fire lite MS-10UD
For initiating devices it has i3s and another detector I don’t know. For pulls it has Edward’s 270spo’s. For notification it has Wheelock NS-24110’s. There is kind of a fail in the parking garage with only one NA on the Ceiling.
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That’s certainly an interesting system. That ceiling mounted NS reminds me of a system near me that I’ll probably post about soon.
White letter Simplex 4050-80s, including flush-mounted Faraday 812 horns, in a 1950s nursing home in my general area. (won’t reveal location for privacy reasons)
Photos taken November 2023
This is my first time seeing a Simplex 4050-80 out in the wild. I was visiting my grandmother (still alive and well!), and couldn’t stay to take better pics. I think the pulls were BG-12s.
What the Faraday 812 horns look like:
(source unknown, from my rare alarms image archive)