Elevators at stores in a local mall don't have smoke detectors by them.

A local mall near me doesn’t have smoke detectors by the elevator in any of the four anchor stores. It is a pretty old mall built in the 1970s. Are the elevators in the mall too old for smoke detectors by them to work? The fire alarm systems in the stores are all pretty modern. One store has white SpectrAlert Advances on the ceiling.

That is weird. My local mall has smokes by elevators because 3 of the 4 anchors have been demo’ed back in the late 90’s. Even though the Belk has been there when the mall opened even they have a Fire-Lite smoke!

I found documentation that traces the evolution of elevator and fire alarm interfacing. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers added elevator recall to the mechanical code in 1973. At that time recall only was required for elevators with a travel distance of 25 feet above or below the designated floor. Recall could be initiated by smoke detector or key switch.

The attached file is that section of the document. If anyone wants the complete article I can make it available.

All of the anchors were built with the mall except for the JCPenney anchor which was added on in the mid 1980s and the JCPenney doesn’t have a smoke detector by the elevator either. The JCPenney is also the only anchor store that has an actual emergency phone you can pick up in it’s elevator. All the other stores just have phone buttons in the elevators to push for help.

The 25 ft travel criterion was dropped from ASME A17.1b, 1992 supplement, so the Firefighters’ Service Recall then applied to all automatic non-designated attendant elevators regardless of the travel distance.

What is the elevator travel distance in the J C Penny?

The document I am getting this information from does not deal with telephones in elevators. That is another information search.

I see that a lot in older apartment buildings, and it usually comes down to age/grandfathering. I just did one the other day, a 14 story building built in the 70s or so. Wierd system setup. The system is pretty new, its a Fire Lite panel replacing an old Edwards relay panel. Oddly enough, each unit has heats & mini horns (may have been added on), but the halls don’t have smokes in them whatsoever, the only 2 smokes in the entire building are at the top of the stairwells. The elevators are original and they only have a key switch recall. The parking garage has heat detectors instead of a sprinkler system. Definitely not up to today’s codes, as a building that size should actually have Fire telephones & a speaker system.