Why Would They Do This?

Fire Alarm General Discussion
1

I walked in to a restroom (single person) to find this:
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I know the intent is to let people know the alarm is going off, but this is overkill for a 4’x6’ area, even if it was (although, probably not) set on low volume. Is there anything against this? Would it exceed the dB limit in that small of an area? I’m usually okay with the SpectrAlert Advance, but this has crossed the line.

Any thoughts on why this was installed in an area not much bigger than a closet?

2

That is kind of overkill. It may also depend on who designs the building. The Walmart I worked at had ceiling-mount SpectrAlert Advances everywhere, even in smaller offices. But then again, the Walmart corporation actually designed the alarm system, and that’s what they wanted. (I do remember the horn/strobe in the break room was on low volume, but of course they’re louder in bigger, more open areas.)

3

Even low volume would be overkill. Just a high candela strobe would be enough.

4

Because we are evil…

5

Nah, only the system designer is in this case, you just did your job.

6

The local Kmart in my area has a white ceiling-mount SpectrAlert Advance horn/strobe in a one person bathroom the size of a walk-in closet in the front of the store. There’s a ceiling-mount SpectrAlert Advance horn/strobe right outside the bathroom.

7

There was also one outside the door. We’re lucky they didn’t go off while we were washing our hands.

8

Unless I grabbed the wrong one and too lazy to walk back to the truck for the right one…

9

which… we can almost guarantee is what happened. lol

10

It was Friday, at 4:00, right before a three day weekend. Give me a break!

I can think of a couple of scenarios…

1.) Prints said horn/strobe - installer thought it should be a strobe - boss told him to go by the prints
2.) Prints said strobe - installer grabbed a horn/strobe and snapped it in place by mistake (which is possible because it’s not uncommon to some people to put a horn/strobe in box that has a strobe model number because they lost the original box and were too lazy to sharpie the box with the right model)
3.) Lazy installer who just didn’t care what the prints said and just grabbed one
4.) AHJ specified a horn/strobe for some ungodly reason
5.) Someone after the fact took them down and just randomly placed them back onto the mounting plates (we one had painters take down a bunch of addressable smoke detectors to protect them but then just randomly placed them back messing up all the location descriptions)

My money is on #4!

11

If that were so, I’d make the final decision maker listen to an Advance going off for 3 hours! Not really, but if it were up to me, I’d require strobes, or chime strobes if an owner wants audible.

12

we had someone take down all the smokes on an addressable system and clean them… and randomly put them back up. fire department figured it out when they responded to a basement fire that turned out to be in the kitchen. :lol:

13

Look at it this way, when it goes off and scares the crap out of you, you’re already on the pot, so its all good.

14

Alarms in restrooms are generally a mixed bag. Very few places that I have been had horns in the bathroom and most of the time are just strobes. I don’t even know WHY you would put a full horn in the bathroom.

The 4 person bathroom at an Olive Garden near my house has a Simplex 2901-9846 horn and a 4904-9105 in both restrooms (I’m assuming). The 5 person bathroom at the one I went to in Arizona had a Faraday 6120 horn/strobe in the restrooms.

15

Then I sue them for the cost to fix my exploded eardrums!

16

It’s possible if this is a 4 wire device the horn isn’t even connected. I’ve seen this done once with a Simplex TrueAlert in a small corridor of the middle school I attended.

17

I can confirm that there is a horn/strobe in the men’s room. I was at that Olive Garden a few years ago, and was taken slightly off guard when I saw it.

18

My high school had a horn/strobe in the multiple person bathroom in the concession stand building at the football field. However in that case, there was no horn outside the bathrooms, so a horn was needed.

19

Yeah, there was one just outside the room, so it was not necessary for there to be a horn.

20

I also remember at B.S.U., in Hart/Burnell Hall (where many of my brother’s classes were), it was built in 1979, with a Johnson Controls/Standard Electric Time system with Space Age 2DCD+AV32 horn/lights. Many of the restrooms had an alarm in them, and given how loud Space Age 2DCDs can be, that must’ve been pretty bad! And they had plenty in the hallways.
But in 2009-2010, they upgraded to a Simplex 4100U system (non-voice evac), and for the most part just installed the new alarms (TrueAlerts) where the old ones were on white wooden planks during the upgrade. Some of the restrooms had a 4906-9127 TrueAlert horn/strobe installed in each of them, replacing the old Space Age alarms. Others had remote TrueAlert strobes installed in place of the old alarms.
Most of the other newer Simplex systems on the campus put remote strobes in the restrooms, except the Campus Center, which I remember each one in the non-renovated areas having a 4903-9219 horn/strobe (system was a Simplex 4100 from the mid-90s.)