"Overkill" systems

Let’s start a topic about systems that seem overkill for the environment they’re in. For example, a highway rest stop with a Simplex 4100ES, or a gas station with voice evac.

I’ll start: I went to a Longhorn Steakhouse in Sarasota, FL with an NFS-640 voice evac system, with SpectrAlert Advance speaker/strobes. I’ve also seen this at another restaurant in Chantilly, VA, but the name escapes me at the moment.

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a kohls had an addressable system with about 7 devices altogether.

I remember going eating in a Mexican restaurant with speaker strobes

It’s an interesting coincidence that you mentioned a rest stop with a 4100 as an example—this is the first system I thought of. Certain ONroute rest stops along Highway 401 in Ontario have 4100U panels with InfoAlarm displays:

Simplex 4100U Fire Alarm Control Panel | Picture taken in Tr… | Flickr

These systems are also unusual due to their use of separate horns and strobes:

Similarly, a tiny three-storey building at my university has a 4100ES with TrueAlert speaker/strobes. The first floor of the building is occupied by a small restaurant, while the upper floors house offices and meeting areas.

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the wright brothers memorial building (which is actually very small) has voice evac and an addressable system.

My Pureto Vallerta over here has those too

my school has a seprate voice evac system in one gym that is not all that big

Remember that there’s a sports venue in which all the pulls are IN PAIRS side by side. Maybe one is for alarm and the other is for some sort of device activation - possibly activating pumps for hydrants?

What brand of voice evac system does your school gym use?

The system is an est system in the north auxilary gym not even the main gym

one set is likely dormant.

a small building at my local train station has a simplex 4100U for some reason (might be because it’s networked to something, possibly a building on the other side of the tracks)

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is it apart of a bigger system or is it a seprate smaller system

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We used to do the one OnRoute by Ingersoll that was built in the 90s. That one has a Mircom FA-1000, with Spectralert Classic Horns. The new ones seemed like the FA contractor got their moneys worth with the separate horn/strobe thing lol.

One overkill system that I have seen is at Wilmot ski resort in Wisconsin. Inside the main lodge, there is an EST 4 panel for a relatively small building. the N/A’s are EST genesis speaker strobes in white with “FIRE” lettering. there are also separate speakers in some spots of the building. the only initiating devices seem to be 5 pull stations and two duct detectors. the pulls are 278-SIGA, and the duct detectors are conventional EST.

It may be a complex, so they could use it in a network assuming smaller panels can’t do networking

That could be true, but as fat as I could see, there was an est3 in the other building

this can be found in Fire alarms at UMass Boston .
there is a voice evac 4100ES in a shed that is the size of a bedroom and is normally unoccupied


this photo was taken by @randomperson

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Not too overkill, but thought it was kinda big for the facility.

The Mohawk rest area on the New York State Thruway has a Mircom FX-2000 panel, which looks to have voice capability. This isn’t a gigantic rest area, yet it has what looks to be speaker/strobes and voice evac. Pretty neat seeing a Mircom system in the US; seems they’re much more common in Canada.


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The most modern FACP with……
a vintage masterbox?

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