Is voice evac required in schools nowadays?

[randomperson]

@Housedays

@firefreak57

@"[Isaaaakkk

"]rolls eyes dramatically

My area doesn’t have much voice evac. There’s only one highshool here that has a voice evac system.

Same, but while on vacation here in Colorado I’ve seen my fair share of places with voice evac everywhere, and actually in a Starbucks. Back home it’s mostly horn strobes unless it fits into a category of building requiring voice evac (heck, even the airport back home has horn strobes)!

A Starbucks had voice evac? That’s strange, considering how small Starbucks buildings are.

It was probably part of a large building.

[EdwardsFan]

@randomperson

@Housedays

A Starbucks had voice evac? That’s strange, considering how small Starbucks buildings are.

It was probably part of a large building.

No I could see that. One of my professors works for Honeywell, and he’s put voice evac systems into smaller buildings (walk up apartments, one story buildings, etc), they do have smaller panels for that type of installations.

[firefreak57]

@EdwardsFan

@randomperson

@Housedays

A Starbucks had voice evac? That’s strange, considering how small Starbucks buildings are.

It was probably part of a large building.

No I could see that. One of my professors works for Honeywell, and he’s put voice evac systems into smaller buildings (walk up apartments, one story buildings, etc), they do have smaller panels for that type of installations.

Or it could be a strip mall type building where all the alarms in the entire structure are connected to one panel. I’ve seen systems with voice evac set up like that.
Simplex 4100ES, all speaker strobes, TrueAlertES remote strobes and addressable pulls, SmartSync horn strobes, and one TrueAlertES weatherproof alarm (outside the building) with addressable pulls and TrueAlarms. This was also done because under said shops was an underground parking garage.

[wiley209]

@Housedays

Not many restaurants in my area have fire alarm systems. Golden Corral and Olive Garden are exceptions.

Some in my area don’t, but others do. There are also a number of restaurants that used to have no fire alarm system but then had one installed. Take the McDonald’s near my college; originally they had no alarm system at all. Then in spring 2011 they installed an addressable Fire-Lite system with SpectrAlert Advance horn/strobes.

@randomperson

Yes, at least in Massachusetts IIRC, voice fire alarm systems are required in schools nowadays.
However, I have no idea why my last 2 schools had a voice system that did not play any messages, just Code-3 tones.

I know it seems to be required for new school buildings nowadays. All of Brockton’s new public school buildings built since 1998 have voice-evac systems (and they’re all EST.) Other cities and towns follow suit as well (one of our neighboring towns, West Bridgewater, had a new middle/high school building built last year to replace the aging 1950s structure, and they built it with a typical-style Simplex 4100ES voice-evac system).
Any schools that get renovated or go for a full-scale fire alarm upgrade (i.e. replacing all the devices), they go with voice-evac as well. There are quite a few schools here that have Notifier NFS(2)-640 voice-evac systems, and I’m pretty sure my old middle school will be getting one as well once they finally upgrade (to replace their ancient Gamewell FlexAlarm system from the 1950s.)

[Simplex4100es]

Yeah, my elementary and middle school had about 350 students each, and we had a simplex 4100ES voice evac

[Lightning_Fox]

yes I beleve so because in my high school we fully replaced the 20 yo system to voice evac