|
System Sensor S2475 remote strobe.
|
This is one of the notification appliances connected to my fire alarm system. I only installed one audible appliance, one is visual, and another remote strobe is going to be installed. I don't install electronic horns since these are horribly loud. One bell (with a piece of tape to diminish the strength of the bell sound) is way enough! The rest is strobes.
|
|
For quiet areas like hospitals there are chimes, which produce around 75dB if I remember.
Bells however used to be the most used kind of notification appliances. Only few places used horns before the 1990s, mostly in areas where fire alarm bells could be mixed up with other bells, like in schools. The one I attend for example has 80s Wheelock mechanical horns set in slow March Time (0.5 sec strikes, 60 times/min). Since the school used to have bells, they had to use horns. Today only a few bells have been left disconnected, and a jingle is played in the intercom system instead.
I already discussed about the school's fire alarm system with the teacher I had in my fire alarm class. He already did some troubleshooting on it and according to him, that system is a real nightmare. Several horns didn't work at all until they decided to do some repairs on the system in January. Last year during a fire drill we were in a room with a non-working horn, everyone was outside except us XD. The horn in the 3rd floor didn't work either, and during a fire drill last fall we had to listen very carefully to be able to hear the horns on the 2nd floor LOL.
My school uses these clocks in the classrooms too. My elementary school had the same clocks, though the fire alarms are different. they have halogen lamps that blink on and off through a white window with "FIRE" on it and they sound like a robotic duck going "WAAA, WAAA WAAA ... WAAA, WAAA, WAAA". they're simplex as well, though they must be from the 90s when the school was built. my high school still has the old red electromagnetic bells for both the periods (they're silver) and fire, but they're disconnected, replaced by electronic bells and the simplex ones.