What alarm do you have at work/school

[EdwardsFan]

After staying in a high-rise hotel, those kinds of systems have always interested me. What floor were you on?

I was on the 26th floor during the alarm. I've been told that the second stage alarm automatically sounds on the floor where the alarm was initiated (along with the floors above and below) while the first stage signal is broadcast on all other floors.

I'm also quite interested in high-rise fire alarm systems! This was my first real-life experience with this type of setup.

That's cool, I learned a ton about these systems in my fire alarm course, but have yet to see one in action. I have worked on high-rise systems, but they were installed before this requirement. The one building in my city is a 28 floor condo building, which has a Mircom FX-2000, but it is a single stage system.

[El Chupacabra]

Today, I heard this system sounding during a false alarm. I only heard the first stage signal (60 BPM chime) as the alarm had been initiated a few floors below mine. After about one minute, an automatic bilingual message was broadcast, indicating that the fire alarm had been activated on the 18th floor and asking all occupants of the 17th, 18th and 19th floors to evacuate immediately without using the elevators. The signals were silenced about five minutes later and a live all-clear announcement was made.

Another false alarm occurred this week and I was able to get an audio recording of the event. The recording includes the first stage signal and message along with two different all-clear messages (and some commentary from my coworkers, unfortunately). I wasn't quick enough to get a full recording of the second all-clear message, which indicated that the building systems had been reset; only the French portion of this message is featured in the video.



Hopefully the video will work properly!

[randomperson]

NOT SAFE FOR DIAL-UP
So, this summer I'm attending a programming course (DO NOT ASK for more details) at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA. (but not this upcoming week, thanks to something which you'll be able to figure out from my next post.)

Here are the fire alarm systems at Harvard I've seen so far...

Gutman Conference Center
Panel: Simplex 4100 (there's an annunciator at the entrance)

Pull stations: 4099-9001's, and 4099-9006's in renovated areas.

Detectors: Newer TrueAlarms

Signals: TrueAlert speaker/strobes

There are also many Edwards Adaptahorns, which are now obviously disconnected.




53 Church Street
Panel: FCI FC-72, located at the entrance
Pull stations: Sigcom SG-32's rebranded by Mammoth Fire Alarms

Detectors: Fenwal PSD-7155's (?)

Signals: Gentex Commander 2 horn/strobes



Also, something happened on Wednesday... (drumroll, please!)
I was walking near Porter Square (also in Cambridge) when I heard something beeping. I first thought it was a timer in a restaurant, but then I noticed it was in code-3! So I went to investigate.
It was SpectrAlert Classics, at a multi-family home. (I could also hear what sounded like mini-horns in the background.)
When I got there, someone who looked like a manager had just arrived and was on the phone with someone for a few minutes, and then silenced the alarm. (Didn't see the panel, but it kept chirping every few seconds once silenced.)

[Simplex 4051]

Sucks that they disconnected the Adaptahorns because I really would have liked to see more of them. But then again, look it how low to the ground they are!