In my middle school, the system is a simplex 4010 with simplex 4903-9252 horn strobes and 4903-9236 horn strobes The system is set to code 3. The interesting thing is that the strobes will flash with the horns, but in the gap between each round of code 3, the strobes won’t flash, which I think is a fire code violation (Strobes flash at least 60 times per minute), but I an not sure about that. My elementary school had a simplex 4010 as well, with simplex true alerts. I have been wondering why this would happen, but sometimes the horns would immediately go off, and sometimes the strobe would flash once, three times, or four times before the system would go off. Anyway, fire drills are quite loud.
I’m not sure if that is against code, but it does seem pretty normal. Don’t quote me on this, but the AS at my ES which was the only code-3 horn in the school didn’t flash between the code-3 rounds.
I hope im not bumping this, but I totally forgot to update this thread with the final results of my schools alarms last year. Oops. Well first, just background, my school used to have a Faraday system of UMMT’s with the “FIRE” lettering on the sides, not the front, Rebranded Chevron pull stations that said “Faraday” on them, with some having stopper II’s on them. Never saw the pannel, but did see the annunciator every day, just dont remember the model number. Now we have what i assume is a Simplex 4100ES or whatever the current voice evac pannel would be, Voice evacuation system. NA’s are Regular-NOT ES- Red wall mount Truealert remote strobes, White Rectangular Ceiling mount remote strobes, Truealert speaker strobes (Red wall mount and white ceiling mount), and regular simplex tbars, addressable, with all pulls getting new Stopper II’s with Sirens. Any existing smokes got truealarms. The location of the old Faraday annunciator got a new simplex annunciator, and i also saw in the reflection of the boiler room viewing window, a annunciator in the janitors office, just down the hall from the front entrance annunciator. I dont know where the pannel is.
Alarms:
October: Tech working on system tripped alarms, first time we ever heard it go off, it was in Default Whoop/Voice Messsages, but that was confusing, because the intruder alert tone is whoop with a different voice message over the pa system. My teacher had us lockdown despite the fire strobes flashing.
October(Week later): Before school the techs were working on the system and it was going off in Default whoop/voice. This may have been when they changed the tone.
November:(Week Later): Tech working on system somewhere tripped the system, everybody evacuated, system was in HI-LO tone only no voice. This was strange, since its a voice evac system, but no voice. I wish they would have changed the tone to Temporal Code 3 with a voice message.
November:(2 Weeks later): Someone burnt cookies in cooking class, setting off system, normal evacuation with new HILO Tone only.
January: Since we havent had a required drill yet, we were forced to do a full evacuation at 1:45pm the last week of january, during a snowstorm, when it was below freezing out.
These were all of the alarms we had. We have not had one real lockdown drill since i began going to the school, two years ago.
We have had 1 tornado drill each year, just an announcement over the pa, and the 2001SRN siren on top of the school goes off for the Statewide tornado drill.