I went into an old supermarket recently that opened at the mid 1990s and they had the rectangular Simplex fire alarm NAs on the wall. Most of them were installed correctly, but a couple of them were installed on the wall sideways. One of them was sideways with the strobe up top, and the other one was sideways with the strobe down at the bottom.
Just why did they installed a couple of the Simplex NAs sideways? It seems really strange.
If you’re referring to the 4903-series, there have actually been vertical models in that series: was the fire lettering on the ones you saw the right way up?
The NAs said fire sideways and so they were clearly installed on the wall sideways. They were meant to be horizontal NAs.
Alright: that’s odd. Are they the 4903-series though?
Yes., they are the Simplex fire alarm notification appliances of that series.
Ah okay (not sure why you didn’t say that from the get-go but thanks): there are vertical 4903-series models, but according to you the ones you saw are horizontal models mounted vertically, which you’re right about when it comes to that not being correct: heck the strobes might be affected from the devices being mounted in such a way, not just the lettering, since most fire alarm strobes have reflectors specifically designed to reflect the light from the strobe tube in a particular direction (usually downward for wall strobes): with those 4903s mounted vertically the designed-for-horizontal-mounting reflectors might now reflect the light from their strobes sideways instead, thus likely reducing the strobes’ effectiveness.