is your area polluted with spectralerts?

my area is getting more and more polluted with spectralerts and bg-12 pull stations.

Just a simple request:

Can we please limit the amount of these types posts? Or at least the time period in which they are posted? They are kinda random and they kinda feel spamy and not really meaningful. :?

Just my thoughts.

Anyways to answer your question:

Spectra-Alerts Advances are popular in some of the new Doc-In the Boxes around town. Some of the old hardware stores have Classics. Most have Commander 3s.

Most of the buildings in my area have Simplex. Probably because their HQ for North Central Florida is in my hometown.

Agreed, Chris.
Now, to answer your question, Housedays, the reason Spectralerts and BG-12 pulls are becoming increasingly common essentially just boils down to cost. Why pay several hundred thousand dollars on a Simplex or EST system when you can just as easily have a cheap Fire-Lite or Silent Knight installation?
Plus, any third-party installer can sell Fire-Lite and Silent Knight, making installers that sell these all the more common and in constant competition with each other. Competition = lower prices and thus is good for the end-user, who doesn’t want to break the bank on a fire alarm system.
While the enthusiast in me would at least like to see more Wheelock or Gentex signals around, the miser in me says that as long as the system works well, I don’t care what signals are in the building.

Where are you looking? The panels that use those devices are aimed at the small business market so you’ll see them everywhere in retail, restaurants, etc.

Walk into a 30 story building and let me know what you find. :wink:

I can only think of one SpectrAlert system I have ever seen installed… which is odd considering how often their ‘popularity’ is discussed on this forum. Around here, the notification is predominantly Simplex or Wheelock.

I’d personally like to see more Gentex products, considering their final assembly in the US.

In my area Simplex systems are becoming less and less common. Over about the past five years I’ve seen a ton of vintage systems in my area replaced with either addressable Siemens or Notifier systems, most with Wheelock Z-series or Exceder-series N/A’s. Part of the reason why Simplex systems are less popular nowadays is because our local Simplex branch closed a few years ago, right around the time when two of the three major universities in my area switched to Honeywell. I don’t see too many Advances though.

something that is common in walmart and target stores is radionics equipment. every walmart and target that i’ve been in has had radionics panels and pull stations.

In my area it kind of depends on where you go, but I don’t see them as often as I used to where I used to live.

It feels like it although I really haven’t seen a lot of them around. My elementary school and my college which both had Simplex systems was replaced with Notifier and got SpectrAlert Advance speaker/strobes. My middle school for now seems to be intact.

While SpectrAlert signals are not particularly rare around here, my area is far from being saturated with these devices. I tend to see more SpectrAlert Advance speakers and speaker/strobes than horns and horn/strobes. First-generation (“classic”) devices, however, are far less common. As for BG-12 pull stations, I have yet to see a single one where I live.

Around my area from what I remember, the original systems in resteraunts, grocery stores, etc. used to be dominated by Wheelock N/A’s and some sort of Honeywell (Silent Knight, Fire Lite, etc.) panel but after most of these businesses were remodeled, they switched over to Advances and that’s almost all I see these days along with BG-12’s.

Canada doesn’t have many BG-12s. Only place I’ve seen them is along Toronto’s PATH system. Bunch of those buildings use them.

As far as where I am…oh, boy. Few buildings that aren’t large that don’t have SpectrAlerts. Every convenience store, restaurant and big box store. Most schools as well.

Ironically I don’t think I have seen a SpectrAlert horn in person. Most of them seem to be speaker strobes.

Consider yourself lucky.

An apartment building I lived in a year ago had them and TrueAlerts on continuous.

Were there any horns IN the apartment?

Yeah. A TrueAlert. Most units had Advances on high volume, so I guess I could consider myself lucky.

So some apartments had Advances and some had TrueAlerts?

Yup. A couple had Genesis horns. Advances generally replaced dead 1st Generation TrueAlerts within the past few years, I’m assuming the Genesis horns are older. The Genesis horns do Code 3. At this point, most horns (horn/strobes in the hallways) are Advances. This is at a state university in New York.

To really make things weird, the ADA units had multiple devices. I saw an ADA 2 bedroom that had a Genesis horn in the bathroom (most 2 BRS had the horn in the bathroom for some reason, while 1 and 4 BRs had them in the hallway), a GX-90 in one bedroom and a SpectrAlert Classic horn/strobe in the other bedroom.

That sounds like a total nightmare. Especially the horn in the bathroom. Why would you put a horn in an apartment bathroom?

Ask whoever designed the fire alarms at SUNY Buffalo that question. I thankfully had a 1 BR with the horn in the hall. Could you imagine that thing going off when you’re in the shower?