While I was on campus today, I noticed that one of the buildings at my university received an upgrade over the weekend. The previous system, which was still intact when I walked through the building last Thursday, consisted of an addressable Simplex panel (almost certainly a 4100U) with two 4602-series SCU annunciators, bilingual 4099-9001 pull stations, TrueAlert horn/strobes, and TrueAlarm smoke detectors. Over the weekend, an EST3 panel was installed : the pull stations were replaced with bilingual EST SIGA-270s, the TrueAlarms were replaced with SIGA detectors (many SIGAs were also installed where there were no TrueAlarms previously), and a huge EST3 annunciator with LED annunciation modules was installed where the 4602 SCUs were previously mounted. Oddly enough, the TrueAlerts were left in place : the combination of SIGA-270 pull stations and TrueAlert horn/strobes is definitely an unusual sight! I was also surprised to see that they opted for first-generation SIGA detectors instead of newer SIGA2s, which seem to be the default choice for newer EST systems in my area.
This upgrade is most likely related to the major addition currently being built behind this building. If that’s indeed the case, I’m suprised that they replaced such a recent system (less than ten years old) since I’m sure it would have been possible to expand the Simplex panel to serve the addition.