My grandma’s nursing home has an FS-250 system with Siemens T-bar pulls, Siemens rebranded ZNS horn/strobes, and Siemens FirePrint detectors. Quite jarring for the older residents, who may be in worse conditions, if you ask me! They should have put Wheelock low-frequency sounders or, at least, voice evacuation in this nursing home! However, some of the larger common areas have ZNS strobes, such as the 2nd floor chapel. They also may make an intercom announcement about it on the paging system, as the residence has a PA system in the hallways!
Most fires that start in hospitals will be put out quickly by the hospital’s sprinkler system. Fires in hospitals will rarely require a full evacuation.
Typically the people nearest to the fire will be moved to a safer location I think.
Now back to the startle topic.
It is true that they don’t install loud fire alarm horns in hospitals. It is not recommended and discouraged. It is important that patients and especially doctors performing surgery don’t get startled. Typically hospitals will something unjarring like chimes. Sometimes that NAs will be set to only chime once and then only the strobes will flash after that.
Id recommend reading up on public vs private mode signaling. Hospitals are typically private mode in the patient areas
It’s more so that they usually have staff who make announcements instead of having an auto message; not to say they aren’t out there. I have come across some systems that do have the messages. It’s a lot easier now a days too. I know before for Mircom, you had to buy a special module for the speaker system to have voice evac.
I do Kidde systems and have recently installed a VM Panel to replace a Notifier 5000 voice system. Their audio system is fairly easy to program; You can add custom messages and it comes with 520hz tone and a Evac and Alert message. I could have programmed it into the panel but I left it with the 520HZ code 3 tone only.
That is false actually. I do service work for a small hospital; it is an EST 3 two stage system, but with EST Genesis horns. Yeah that’s right, EST Genesis HORNS. Even with the 2 stage, it was pretty loud when we did the annual test, and then hitting the 2nd stage was worse lol. I find it wierd too, as before the hospital had an Older Edwards 8500 system, but had Edwards 339-D Chimes instead, and then the few Edwards 333-Ds in like mechanical areas and the basement.
In Canada this is usually the case. Hospitals, nursing homes, some hotels, all usually have 2 stage systems. We even did a theatre with a 2 stage Mircom system that replaced an Edwards 6500 2 stage, with Edwards 333-D bells. I was super pissed though, because we lost the contract when they decided to renovate, and I didn’t get to save any of those rare single stroke bells.
Oh, just like New York in that regard huh? (though I believe that’s mainly just in high-rises where there’s alway someone on duty near the voice panel who can make announcements) Still though: what if for whatever reason there happens to be nobody there (including if the person normally assigned to make announcements is unconscious or dead for whatever reason, which might happen as a result of the emergency condition itself): how would building occupants be notified of exactly what’s going on & what to do in response if the system plays no message? (& like I said if there was no one to make announcements either)
Jeez…it seems like most hospitals in general though go with either chimes or speakers that play a chime tone (why exactly I don’t know apart from the previous reason I stated regarding avoiding scaring &/or startling the occupants).
Makes sense I guess. Shame about those bells though.
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