The reason I’m asking this question is because the only time I have heard them, they were super quiet. My local high school has some Wheelock 7002t’s. In 4th grade, we were practicing for our music program in the high school auditorium. Suddenly, the Wheelock 7002t’s went off. They were not loud at all and even I, who was deathly afraid of fire alarms back then, barely jumped at all. At first I thought it was because the giant auditorium room only had 2 in the whole thing but when we walked right under them they were still at a very comfortable volume level. We could still have normal conversations.
From the guess that it is definitely below the 75Db level that it needs to comply with. It is most likely that the devices will have to be replaced if not adjusted to a higher volume or cleaned out from whatever might’ve gotten into it from over 35 years it’s gone through. Normally they should be above 90Db which you wouldn’t be able to have normal conversations underneath them.
I don’t think they are really going to fix them because this is the last year that that school is going to be in use. They re building a new high school to replace that one that is set to open at the start of the next school year. They have replaced a couple dead ones in the past years with simplex TrueAlerts because the system is a 4100u.
Funny story involving Wheelock 7002T’s. My elementary school had them installed, in 1st grade we had a surprise fire drill. The fire drill starts, but nobody in the class, not even the teacher noticed. I only noticed they were going off when I got up to get a tissue by the door, and alerted my teacher. So to answer the question, a classroom of 1st graders are louder than 18 year old Wheelock 7002T’s.
1 Like
Yeah and the ones at my local hugh school were added in 1983 when a Cerberus Pyronics system was installed to replace the school’s original system from 1957. In 2007, they upgraded to an addressable Simplex 4100u system but left the old notification appliances.
A bit off topic, but my guess is the 7002Ts at your high school are the open-grille versions since they were installed in 1983 (the tamper-proof grille was introduced in 1985).
Healthy 7002Ts are really loud, like around 90 dBs. In fact, I remember how loud the ones at my elementary school were because I jumped every time they went off. And I was also afraid of fire alarms at the time.
In middle school, some of the 7002Ts were quiet. In fact, there was one fire drill where we could barely hear the alarm because the nearest unit wasn’t loud at all. But there were some units that were still healthy.
When I was in high school, the 7002Ts in the main building were replaced with Gentex Commander 3s. However, the music building, freshman wing, library, cafeteria, and the auxiliary gym still had 7002Ts. And they sounded healthy when they went off (I only heard them in the library, freshman wing, and music wing). But there was one 7002T in the freshman wing that sounded like it had its screws loose (it made this low-pitched grumbling sound but still very loud). The freshman wing also had a Fire-Lite rebranded open-grille 7002 that wasn’t very loud. And the main gym had a 7002T that was painted white that sounded healthy but had a very slow flash rate.
They are actually the newer versions. I now know that they were actually installed in ‘86 rather than ‘83.
We had those things in both Ann Arbor Pattengill and Bryant Elementary School where I went to plus Tappan Middle School. Gotta say, at times when they went off, I got stomach cramps, wet myself(yes that’s true), shaking and MOST times covering my ears. When I didn’t, It was very painful. One in the hallway DIRECTLY across from the multipurpose room(AKA the Cafeteria) and left of the library was aswesome because it was super fast(strobe and horn skip)and the one in the cafeteria sounded like it was on it’s last few months of life(the strobe worked ok, kinda slow but the horn sounded terrible(sounded like it was trying to fart and die at the same time)hahaha 
other’s sounded at different speeds and pitches. One day just like the other person mentioned, we had a fire drill(I assume)and not one person in the class even the teacher noticed and I was the only one, I told her we need to leave but by the time they started to leave, they turned off and we got written up and they were not too pleased with us not leaving the building. they should be loud enough to be heared through a closed door. One time on a SATURDAY, I was having a swim lesson at Tappan and the fire alarms were going off and they were just about deafening however in the hallway, I stood there with them going off and didn’t plug my ears LOL. they should be louder, but it’s out of our control.