Does anyone here know how New fire alarm installations are quoted? I am considering getting a fire alarm system installed but don’t want the Honeywell
brand because I am not a fan of the Advances. Not because of the loudness but the actual sound of the alarm. My high school had it and it sounds horrible in the distance. So no Firelite or Silent Knight which I can buy on the internet. Just an opinion. Anyway I have my eyes on an EST or Simplex system. The EST vendor would be System Sales Corp which was bought out by Redhawk fire and security and Simplex would just be my local branch. I would love to have a EST 3 or EST 3x panel or a 4100es panel. As far as I know those panel run around $2500? However I’ve heard that installations are quoted by square foot? Does anyone know how much I could be quoted for a 1800 sqft home with 2 floors with a EST 3 or 4100es panel? I would love a voice evac system over horns. There would probably be 4 speaker strobes, 6 strobe only, 4 or 5 smoke detectors, and one pull station at each exit which would be 3. Based on a $2 per square foot I get around $4000? Considering the panels are higher end would the price per square foot increase? Just asking for input as I know I would have to contact the vendor to know for sure but don’t want to be shocked at price tag.
Keep in mind your $2/sq. ft estimate is for new construction. Having a system retrofitted into an existing building could jump prices to near $10/sq ft.
Just with that you’re already upwards of $20,000.
Don’t forget you will also have to pull permits, have engineering drawings completed, and be subjected to regular inspections.
You could get a firelite, silent knight, bosch, etc. and use a wheelock power supply and wheelock NACs, or gentex or virtually anyone else for the notification appliances. as long as you use that manufacturers power supply you can use their signals, you aren’t tied to advances. the FACP would simply monitor the power supply and activate it whenever it went into alarm.
I don’t think a company like Simplex would be interested in residential. Your best bet would be to call Tyco’s residential line and get something quoted, just tell them you don’t want the advances. They use some rebranded panels.
if it was a commercial building you’d just call the dealer and they’d send out a salesmen to quote it. they would include installation, engineered drawings, permits, everything you need if you want it, but it won’t be cheap. labor is expensive and they won’t just sell you the hardware.
voice adds a lot to the price, but you could still have any normal fire alarm panel activate something like a wheelock safepath system that would have preset voice messages. these alone would run a few grand probably.
Hmm interesting. I found an excel document on google with all of Simplex parts and prices for the NJ PA area. The prices are what I expect it to be. The 4100es with voice evac I think would run around $4500, not including the NA’s and pull stations. Is there any possible way I could convince Simplex to sell parts maybe if used? What about the EST vendor which is System Sales corp. They are a distributor, maybe I’ll have better luck with them? I really want the higher end panels but are not sold like FireLite or SilentKnight. NewAgeServer said a distributor might sell parts but it would be marked up?
Here’s the list of Simplex prices. It’s an excel document.
Here’s my $0.02…
You have around 2,000 square feet that the system must cover. That’s not that much in the fire alarm spectrum, and a full size Simplex 4100ES, EST3/EST3X, Notifier NFS2-3030 or Siemens FireFinder XLSV seems to be a bit overkill (in my opinion). The biggest caveat to this application is that you must have sufficient sound output and 110 Candela strobe coverage in all sleeping areas. Did you account for this in your initial plan? Also, did you account for complete strobe coverage? This can be a big cost factor, especially when dealing with proprietary brands.
While I’m not a big fan of the SpectrAlert Advance horn signals, their speakers are actually very nice and have great audio quality. Wheelock also has a nice line of great speaker/strobes, and their SAFEPATH Self-Contained Voice Evacuation panel is bulletproof and compatible with pretty much everything (Simplex and Siemens rebrand them as their own).
A worthy option, as chris+s stated, is a smaller panel (be it addressable or conventional) tied into a self-contained Voice Evacuation Panel and powering strobes/sync controlling power supplies of the signal brand you choose. I have included some example configurations below. (The addressable Notifier panels below are also sold as the Fire-Lite MS-9050UD and Fire-Lite MS-9200UDLS . The conventional Notifier panels are also sold as the Fire-Lite MS-5UD and Fire-Lite MS-10UD.)
Simplex 4007ES (addressable)+Simplex 4003EC (by Wheelock)
Simplex 4006 (conventional)+Simplex 4003EC (by Wheelock)
EST iO64 (addressable)+EST ANS2
EST FireShield (conventional)+EST ANS2
Siemens Cerberus PRO FC901 (addressable)+Siemens SP40S (by Wheelock)
Siemens SXL-EX (conventional)+Siemens SP40S (by Wheelock)
Notifier FireWarden NFW-50/NFW-100 (addressable)+Wheelock SAFEPATH SP40S
Notifier SFP-5UD/SFP-10UD (conventional)+Wheelock SAFEPATH SP40S
Why don’t you just get a MS-2 or MS-4? Those panels are designed to handle smaller applications, as that’s what they were built for. You could also get a 5UD if that’s not your forte. As far as the A/V’s go, new stuff tends to be very expensive on eBay, and I imagine it’s marked up much more by dealers or manufacturers.
If it was for a professional installation (not installed by yourself), I would recommend contacting the manufacturers or dealers if you’re not certain. Also, your local fire marshal or fire department may know what you might need, but don’t take that as actual advice; I’m not a professional by any means here.
Thanks for all the input. I will keep the Wheelock system in mind as their Speaker/Strobes look nice. Just don’t like the default Safepath message but that can be changed.
You’d be very hard pressed to get parts out of Simplex. The problem is they are set up for a corp structure, meaning they need to set up an account, get a quote and a PO, etc. to really get anything done in their system. Its not as easy as just taking a credit card and handing you some items. if you were a business it’d be a lot easier.
You’d have better luck with the EST dealer, but the main issue you’ll run into there is you’ll never get a programming dongle out of them so you’d have to rely on them to, at the very least, come out and program it. Once again, labor isn’t cheap! They’ll probably charge you a grand or more just to set the system up, and $500 every time you want to change it. Seems silly but that’s what they’d get at any other site, so they are going to charge you the same for your simple system.