- When you’re in a store and you don’t know what time it is, you go to the fire alarm panel to find out.
When you go to a store, not to shop, but to look at the system :lol:
Does anybody really know what time it is?
Does anybody really care?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBuUUBrC9eQ I thought that sounded familiar…
But, great music aside, would anyone really go out of their way just to drive to a store to stare at the fire alarm system? Sure, I make a point to at least make a note of the devices while I’m there, but I’ve never actually driven to my local CVS just to see an MS-9050UD tucked away in the back room with Spectralert Advanced signals and BG-10LXs. I go there for the snacks! :roll:
It’s almost a year-old topic that had just been bumped earlier today (but that’s none of my business), but I suppose I’ll take a stab at it.
You know you like fire alarms when…
Your friends sometimes text you pictures of pull stations and stuff and ask you to identify them.
You wonder if your university dorm will have low-frequency sounders or voice evacuation, or maybe both.
It bothers you when a pull station, signal, or detector is obscured by something.
OMG. I get so mad about this it isn’t even funny. Just pull stations, however.
haha the time on the panel thing is not a reliable source. Especially on the Simplex 4005, whose clock is known to run slightly fast.
I see so many panels with clocks that do not have the correct time… makes me wonder if the techs even bother to fix them. I try to whenever I see a panel with the wrong time.
Agreed on the time issues. My DMP XR-500’s internal clock looses about 10 minutes in 24 hours, since it would normally receive time updates from the monitoring center thru the phone line to keep the time correct.
[quote]
OMG. I get so mad about this it isn't even funny. Just pull stations, however.
[/quote]
Yeah. Same here.
…
What was the point* of that post?
In any event, here is my contribution. You know you like fire alarms when:
-You take electric household items and try to simulate alarms with them.
-You try to think of excuses to go in to work/school early on test days.
*: No pun intended, of course.
I was trying to delete it, but couldn’t. It was an accidental double post.
Suppose it’s my turn to take a stab at it 
You know you like alarms when:
- you recognize the sound way before anyone else during an alarm
- you notice outdated smoke alarms in your friends’ houses and at parties
- you get messages on YouTube from 5th graders offering up their first born son for something in your collection
5th graders are raising kids? What has the world come to?
They are probably from Pawtucket “The Bucket,” RI. (This is a joke.)
Haha wouldn’t surprise me nowadays. Of all the times somebody has offered me something for one of my alarms, that was a reference to my all time favorite:
I love the “CASH” followed immediately by “here’s my PayPal”
I wonder if his parents would be willing to pay 500 “dollers” for a 4050 he wouldn’t even be able to use without an appropriate power supply.
You can pull the needed power supply out of a modern desktop computer…
Still $500 is a bit much for it. 
He could find another alarm that is better and easier to use for him off eBay which he could powers off some 9v batteries. Hell, I powered my first alarm ever a Specter Alert Classic, that was given to me by U8oL0 off of one 9 volt! (However I did a test and it drained it in a span of about 15 minutes. I should have recorded it. It sounded so weird when it was loosing power.) Of course my Federal 450D from Andrew required something beefier… I had to power it from a Desktop Power Supply. Worked quite well.
Anyway.
You know you like fire alarms when you complain to your superintendent that the fire alarm system in your schoo is outdated and is a hazard that could get people killed and when you tell him the school board could face serious fines from the NFPA, the ADA, and the Fire Marshal. Not to mention that if anyone dies because this system wasn’t replaced their blood is on the school board’s hands. So currently our school is undergoing an upgrade to a Simplex 4100 ES Voice EVAC system. and yes I did make sure that the specs call for the tone will be on Temporal tone. :mrgreen: (1. Because the old system was on Temporal before(To prevent confusion). 2. I’m sure everyone will appreciate we don’t have a jarring whooping sound going off.) /end very loooonnnggg post. :lol:
All of my 4050’s are 120VAC anyways! :lol:
They’re actually Faraday 5410’s, which is the original model number before it was re-branded by Simplex, but 4050 is more easily recognizable.
NFPA isn’t an enforcement agency, they can’t do anything. They aren’t even a government body, it’s a non profit organization that makes codes that governments can adopt into law as they wish.
3 pulse temporal is required by code, has been since the mid 90’s. gotta jump through hoops to use something else, so most places go with it by default whenever they upgrade.
It still scared him and the school board to make changes. Now we don’t have MT’s at high volume in a 6 feet wide hallway. 
But yeah it really did need upgrading…
What was wrong with the system exactly?