Awesome to hear some schools still have single stroke bells. My old high school had them, and I was supposed to preserve them, but they replaced the system and took all the single stroke bells out.
I am not sure if the bells at my school are single stroke or not.
Dodge Traditional Magnet Middle School Fire Alarm System. Tucson AZ.
(School built in 1954 as Brown Elementary.)
System as of 2022/2023 School year.
This is one of the most diverse Fire Alarm Systems in my school district, combining 80’s 7002ts with 2000’s NS’es as well as some 90’s Gentex. Most systems in my district are prue Simplex.
Some of this is not well documented, so correct me if I get something wrong. (If you have recently been to the school.)
Office
NA’s
A combo of Simplex True-alerts and Cerberus Pyrotronics re-branded 7002Ts.
System Panel, Simplex 4005. Located in the office.
(Correction, I thought it was a 4100U, It was a 4005 the whole time.)
Cafeteria/Multipurpose room
NA’s
2 Cerberus Pyrotronics re-branded 7002Ts on the opposite sides of each other.
Kitchen
NA’s
A Simplex 2903-9838 on a 4903-9101 Strobe Plate.
Outdoor Restrooms
NA’s
A Simplex rebranded Gentex GX-90 which in my opinion is the most annoying alarm in the school. I feel bad for a classmate I know that was in the restroom when that alarm sounded because of a gas leak.
Indoor Restrooms
NA’s
A Wheelock LSM
Band/Orchestra Room
NA’s
A simplex re-branded GOS and SHG in the general room and a 4906-9101 in the Restroom.
(The SHG gives me chilling memories of the gas leak when activated.)
Classrooms
N/A’s
A Wheelock NS/NS4’s is in each classroom. (I am studying to determine if these are NS’es or NS4s.
Hallways
N/A’s
Wheelock NS/NS4’es in all the hallways. (With my experience, they are all out of sync.)
Pull Stations
Simplex 2099-9759’s (These pull stations are everywhere mentioned except for the classrooms. I wanted to save space here so I put it here.)
Smoke Detectors.
Simplex True-alarms (Don’t know the model)
Simplex Heat Detectors in Storage spaces and Home-EC room.
Outside
Cerberus Pyrotronics 6in Vibrating Bell
Abandoned Cerberus Pyrotronics Av32 (It seems) Backbox (Not Connected)
Sounding
When activated, the bells, 7002t’s, and Gentex Alarms all sound on steady. The Wheelock NS/NS4’es in the classrooms and hallways sound in Code 3. Since I guess that all the NACs are set to continuous, so the NS’es get out of sync. (Easy to tell because the strobe flashing does not line up and eventually the horns sound together like one loud pulse.)
I can’t really hear the majority of the alarms outside because of the bells and the super annoying GX-90.
Future notes
Credit for @WheelockNS for pointing out a few alarms.
Next year, I will document a Fire Drill here.
I had some interest in this system because a former student had made a vlog about pulling the system before the system got replaced. (This is 2002.) (Example: The pull-stations used to be Cerberus Pyrotronics MS-X’s before being replaced with the current 2099-9759’s. I’m guessing the panel was Cerberus as well at the time, I have no idea though. (Possibly because one of the riser inspection tags have Siemens and others had Simplex.)
I also got interested because the school had recently had a smoke condition and a gas leak. (I have more on that.) So I wanted to learn more.
I will get some footage of this system soon.
Since the signals were 7002T’s the old pull stations were probably MSX’s, not MSI-20B’s.
The MSX is compatible with the XL3 panel, and the MSI-20B is used with the MXL panel.
I’ve never seen 7002T’s installed on an MXL system. Instead, old MXL systems would use Wheelock MT’s or EHS-DL1’s.
my school has simplex 4903 horn strobes and system sensor spectralerts both classics and advances plus some l series horn strobes with a 4020 panel. the school i went to for 5th grade has gamewell rebranded spectralert classics and bg12s, also rebranded by gamewell. the school also still has pull rods but there are 4050s instead of 4030s, but the 4050s are blocked up instead of replaced which they have at the other school as well
Pull rods, manual trip bells and huge powerful horns … Those retro beauties are COOOOOL!
welcome to our community I’m Andrew a cadet firefighter with norriton fire engine co
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Ah yes, Akron, the former home of a lot of Pull Rod systems until they rebuild the schools and put in newer equipment in those newer schools. Have you ever been in a school that had pull rods. I know Old School Fire Alarms did a lot of his videos on very old Akron schools that would have older Autocall equipment, 2 older Simplex panels and a Tele-Call system (if thats correct). I don’t know if there was any schools in my area that had pull rod systems. Unfortunatly the pull rods systems are basically nonexistant nowadays in my state. What I have heard from some person on the internet that Oregon Schools used some sort of Siren in the 50s and I couldn’t find any sirens in the old schools. It was usually Fredral Signal 350s or Round Edwards Adaptahorns.
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You’re talking about Audinos; He said many schools in Oregon used an actual siren as the fire alarm signal!! I live on the west side of Akron; My dad’s side of the family is from Akron!! In fact, my dad actually worked at a bunch of schools that had pull rods with Autocall FA systems!! I bet you can guess what high school I go to (Here is a hint: this is the same high school that LeBron James went to!)
I actually went to a Catholic school that had a pull rod from the original IBM FA system!! In fact, the old hardware (8 inch IBM bells and manual trip bells used in the rare event of a power failure) from the IBM system is still intact; but the pull rod was removed when I was in middle school.
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It seems in Ohio they keep there older stuff running while here in my state, you don’t see old systems at all if any. There replaced by Silent Knight or Notifier. My rival high school (which the only famous person was a person who made a Minecraft parody of take on me) had a system from 2003 getting replaced last year. In my school, the spectalert advances only lasted around 10 years before all of them getting replaced by the System Sensor L-Series
Is it a large siren like that used for a tornado alert, or several small palm-size sirens located in the building?
Most of Akron’s schools have been erased and replaced with cheap buildings which have cheap ass modern fire alarm systems.
OSFA donated a shipload of vintage FA systems (early FA systems all the way through the early 1980s) and components to fire museums!! He has a personal collection of vintage fire alarm components and systems too!! He gets fire alarm systems and components from the entire USA!!
He is getting the fire alarm system from STVM, (you probably know what high school that is) which is getting a system upgrade pretty soon; possibly one with an automated voice, which is common in newer school buildings.
Its unfortunate. My school district doesn’t have any old buildings that aren’t renovated. My old school district has a ton of old buildings but all of them got a Silent Knight (pre-2012) or Potter (post-2012) system. Luckily thoses systems are saved in Akron. Unfortunately, most of the Fredral Signal A series and B-9 sirens probably been gone for a long time.
There are a handful of old schools in Akron that are still around (abandoned or used for other purposes) Two 1950s era school buildings were renovated; one being a middle school and the other being a high school. Two original elementary school buildings are still in use as their original purpose.
Clone schools? Thats never the case here. We also don’t have many abandoned schools around here eather.
Yeah. Thats what I mean. I haven’t found a single school that has the same floor plan as another. Each school is unique
In the Livonia Public Schools district, there are a handful of examples of schools with exact or near-identical floor plans. They are as follows:
Coolidge and Webster Elementary Schools (central wing only)
Franklin and Stevenson High Schools
Frost Middle, Holmes Middle, and Johnson Upper Elementary Schools
Hoover and Kennedy Elementary Schools
Emerson Middle and Riley Upper Elementary Schools
In virtually all cases, each grouping of schools tended to share the same fire alarm systems, as they were each built no more than four years apart (Standard Electric Time for Franklin and Stevenson, National Time for the rest).
I think it was like that in those buildings that were mentioned, I have no clue.
The groupings are as follows:
Anne T. Case & Otis C. Hatton ES’s both had Autocall FA systems Both of these buildings have since been erased (The later one was erased in 2012/3 and the first one was erased in 2016/7.)
Fred. E. Smith, Highland Park, & Pfeiffer ES’s also had Autocall FA systems (The third one is still in use today and still has its original FA system in service) Watch OSFA’s latest video about it) The first one is still standing (although damaged by a small fire); the second one was erased in 2009. UPDATE: the first one has now since been demolished due to a load bearing wall collapsing.
update: As of November 2023, the the first building was demolished over the summer due to a wall that collapsed. so only one of them still exists.
Walter J. Innes, Robert G. Hyre, & Paul W. Litchfield middle schools had (The third one had a Standard Electric Time FA system; the other two are unknown). The first building is the prototype for the other two; it’s still standing, although renovated in 2008. The other two were erased in 2014.
George Barber (OSFA’s ES), & Ferdinand Schumacher both had Autocall FA systems. The former was erased in 2008; the latter was erased in 2011-12
I do have a question, what does Akron use for there newer systems? My district uses Notifier systems with voice evac.
I believe they use Edwards/EST, Honeywell and Siemens. There are a few newer buildings with automated voice systems.