I think we used to have this thread in the old forums…
To me, in the restroom.
Near one that’s at ear level.
In a swimming pool/hot tub when it’s 31° or less outside.
Any bathroom or small room that has a fire alarm, especially if they are SpectrAlert Advances.
I don’t like to be out in the hallway when they’re testing the alarms in my dorm.
Right in front of or under it. Happened to me twice in elementary school (bells). Happened to me a couple of times in college too, but fortunately both times it was a speaker system, so it wasn’t loud at all.
That happened to someone when I was in grade school. Some kid went out into the hall to go somewhere right before a surprise fire drill and they were right under one of the 4050-80s when they went off.
in an elevator
In 3rd grade my desk was under a U-MMT.
I was talking about this topic with some friends…
In the dr.'s office (dunno)
Shower
Sleeping
Small room with a loud horn
And one cousin told me… in the locker room. In HS, there were many times that he was caught changing when the alarm went off.
In a bathroom made that is made of tile (echos like crazy) with an EST genisess in the room.
That reminds me of an animal shelter that I went for service hours. The bathroom there has a ceiling mount SpectrAlert Advance Horn/Strobe (red) in it.
I’ve been there twice, but, thankfully the alarms didn’t go off.
The shower!
Do you still have that vid, btw (if you know what I’m talking about)?
In total silence.
Another one-- a storage closet with an MT set to the high setting on continuous. And–the storage room echos due to the design of the building.
Here is one that I have been in— We have a corridor that leads out of one of our buildings. A classroom is off of the corridor. There is a Mircom on continuous in this narrow corridor, that also echos. Talk about torture.
In Middle School, I never wanted to be in the bathroom when the alarms went off. The school has Federal Signal speaker/strobes in the bathrooms! The Simplex 4100 slow whoop isn’t too loud, but is VERY startling. I always worried that it would go off if I was in the bathroom (which is usually very quiet).
In High School, I don’t like being in the library when the alarms go off. The Simplex 4040s at my school are very loud and there are two in the library. Being in a room where the alarm is outside the door isn’t as bad as I thought, but still somewhat loud. I would NEVER EVER EVER want to be next to an alarm when it went off. That would just scare the crap out of me (hasn’t happened yet).
In general, I would never want it to be quiet right before the alarm went off, otherwise, it would be very startling.
In the spot where two buildings at my school connect there is a U-MMT and a SpectrAlert Advance less than 5 feet from each other. Wouldn’t want to be there.
Other bad times for a false alarm: washing hair, and just getting into bed, especially if it’s late (this happened to my roommate; she was not pleased).
In My tech classroom, There is a siren in there that activates when the alarm activates. The thing is, its not like a workshop, I’m taking computer tech, so it’s in a classroom. Plus the room is connected to two other small rooms, like anaverage size car and a half, that both have 1 Edwards 10" adaptabel in them. But if you go to my school, you don’t want to be caught anywhere in the halls when the fire alarm sounds, they are really loud, and since my school is pretty old, it echoes too.
The library was the worst place to be in my elementary school after they upgraded the system in 1992. They kept the three V7001T’s in the hallway of the new wing, but added two Edwards 892-1B’s in the library. Very loud and jarring combination.
In my high school, the worst place to be was the ROTC room at the time. It had two 892’s in a relatively small room. Now, this room was designed as a music room, and subsequently became one again, so I can kinda understand why they did that. But the one time I heard them go off, it was painfully loud. The alarms in the hallway seemed quiet by comparison.
Currently, I’m in an office skills training program that sometimes involves me working at a local government office. It’s a pretty small (and generally quiet) office, but there’s a SpectrAlert Advance right behind the desk where I usually work, as well as one inside a smaller room within the office. Considering that these things are supposed to be pretty damn loud even on low volume, I hope I never hear the alarm go off here.
Try one of the cafeterias at my high school. Each one had four Simplex 4040s in it! I was unfortunate once to be in there when the alarms went off.
Any school gymnasium is also not a good place to be when the fire alarm goes off. This never happened to me luckily, but my brother told me how this happened once at the school we went to for grades 1-6. There are two Vibratone 450 horns in the main gym, and the echo made it even louder!
Also, my kindergarten classroom had a Simplex 4051 horn in it. Ouch!
The worst alarm experience I’ve had in my life is when I heard the Standard 30A’s in the gym of my elementary school during the early part of second grade. They replaced those alarms with 892’s later that school year. Those weren’t so bad in there, though there was one time when the alarm went off early in the class while we were sitting quietly, and they did make me jump a bit. In that case, I could hear the V7001T’s in the distance, so that added to intensity of the sound.
I also heard the alarms in my second high school’s gym (892’s again) go off twice. Even though there were six horns in the gym (two in each of the three sections it could be divided into), it didn’t seem that loud at all. The MASS’s in my first high school’s gym weren’t so loud either, though the Hi/Lo tone they were set to bothered me for some reason at the time.