Was my school fire alarm upgrades good?

Hi, I am new here and I was wondering if my school fire alarm upgrades were good. My school was built in the 1970s. They had a system of 1 Edward adaptahorn. I Can’t recall the model and 14 federal signals 450Ds with 12 5 auto call pull stations. Idk why they had an Adaptahorn. Since the school added on in 1980, I think that was part of the old system. But anyways. Now they replaced the entire system with Seimens rebranded Wheelock LED Exceeder speaker strobe and Seimens rebranded Cerberus pyrotronics pull stations. The worst part is that they kept the old wiring up from the old fire alarms and put a plate over them. Can you guys tell me if this was a good upgrade because why would they go with seimens rebrand.

Seems like going by the Vibratones & 4050-001Ts that the original system must have been Autocall, with probably an Autocall MD2 as the panel (don’t know about the Adaptahorn though). As for the new replacement system, I guess they did a good job (though more than likely the old devices were probably thrown out sadly). I believe usually buildings end up going with the lowest bidder, & I guess Siemens was the lowest in this case.

Any idea if they did the whole “put new panel’s circuitry inside original panel’s can” thing?

It didn’t have a panel, It was just horns and pulls on a 3 wire circuit. Also, the alarms were not thrown out they are in a box in a storage room. I saw 3 of them. I asked them if I could have them for 100 bucks and they said I couldn’t cause it wasn’t fair to the other kids.

Oh, really? One of those “pull stations wired directly to the alarms” kind of systems? (like that one that SAFETECH showcased) I take it that when the system was replaced a panel was installed.

Well that’s good, but I think it’s stupid that they won’t let you have them for that reason. Do they really think any of the other kids would be interested in such devices? I don’t think so.

They have an annunciator in the office and a panel in the janitor room. And your right. I bet someone wouldn’t even offer 50 bucks for the whole lot. Cause some of them I remember didn’t work very well. They sounded sick.

I thought so.

Please do your darndest to convince them to give up that box of devices.

I will most certainly convince them for the old alarms.

Hello @meow to the The Fire Panel Forums! The school upgrade was good! So Seimens is a popular fire alarm brand, so your school chose those alarms.

Like I said, Siemens most likely bid the lowest on this particular project, or the service company the school works with is allied with Siemens

But why did they go with the spinoff LED exceeder speaker strobes?

What do you mean by “spinoff” exactly?

Isnt seimens just a rebrand of wheelock?

Yes, Siemens has rebranded Wheelock’s products ever since they were sued by Wheelock in 2005. Part of the agreement was that Siemens would stop production of their own notification appliances & use Wheelock’s instead for 8 years, since Wheelock accused Siemens of copying the former’s NAs & sync protocol. More than likely they haven’t stopped doing so after the 8 years was up because it’s cheaper to continue to rebrand Wheelock’s devices than start production of their own NAs again.

1 Like

Ok. Thank you. Also if any mods are here. If you can lock this topic just like on ARS. That would be great cause the topic has been solved.

Wasn’t fair to the other kids , what type of reasoning is that