I would think malls would be required to a fire alarm system due to their size, however the local mall in my area does not have one. Some of the large stores in the mall do, but the main mall area doesn’t. Are malls required to have fire alarm systems?
I seen many malls that don’t have fire alarm systems. Even if they are required to have a fire alarm system now it may not have been required when it was built.
There’s no universal code or law requiring or not requiring all malls to have fire alarm systems. Nothing is as simple as that. There could be many variables at play as to why that mall doesn’t have one, and without knowing all the facts, it’s impossible to guess what they are.
It could be that they just hide the pulls to prevent false alarms. For my local mall, you have to go in the service corridors to see pulls.
There’s no NAs at the mall either. The large stores have pull stations and NAs, but the main mall area doesn’t.
I guess the PA speakers could also be used also as fire alarm speakers, but that would not be ADA compliant.
Depending on the age of the system, it could have been installed before visual appliances became a requirement. If a system like that were installed now, it would HAVE to have strobes.
They could be installed up in the ceiling? One mall in my city has bells installed up in the ceiling, with ceiling mount silver grilles.
It can also depend on when the mall was built and that it could be grandfathered. I think until the 1980s, malls were typically built without fire alarm systems. But many of them since had alarm systems installed either between the 1980s or the present to meet with the current codes. Of course, new malls being built will have fire alarm systems. The Galleria Mall in Taunton, MA has always had its Simplex 4100 system since it was originally built in 1991-1992 (non voice-evac systen; it has -9838 horns on 4903-9101 strobe plates in the main mall areas, food court and at least one store, while other stores with alarm signals have TrueAlerts)
Looks like the mall may be getting a fire alarm system. I was just there a while ago, and they now have remote strobes in the restrooms. Those are the only NAs in the mall area right now.
Okay, but are the strobes new, or look like they’ve just been installed?
Also, it is highly unlikely they’d do only the bathrooms on one installation day. It just sounds lazy.
Of course, there is always the chance they ran out of strobes or something else happened.
Oh and did you consider the alarms in the mall might be installed on hide-away plates?
They’re definitely new. I’ve been in the malls bathrooms many times before and never saw strobes. The strobes are installed on the ceiling right next to the entrance to the bathrooms, so they’d be hard to miss.
Well, what are they then?
White Wheelock RSS.
Ah, ok. Odd how they’re using those since they are discontinued except for replacement purposes.
I think the reason they only installed in the bathrooms is perhaps because they haven’t decided how to do the main mall area yet. It’s a large two-story mall, so deciding on how to install a fire alarm system in the main mall area is no simple task. The bathrooms are the simple part.
I did not know they were discontinued. Are the Wheelock Exceder’s the main Wheelock NAs that are installed today?
The RSS series hasn’t really been discontinued. I believe they only discontinued 12V and ceiling-mount models, but RSS strobes are still used in installations alongside Wheelock speaker/strobes, chime/strobes, and MT horn/strobes, in addition to weatherproof applications. The Exceder line is now Wheelock’s main series of basic horn/strobes and matching remote strobes.
Oh yeah I totally forgot about that.
Lol.