you should donate some of this hardware to various fire museums in Canada. please tell old school fire alarms about this. He'll probably be happy that you salvaged the entire system.
My high school got a new EST panel and swapped bells for EST Genesis horn strobes relatively recently. All detectors were left from the 90s except in the addition built around the same time. The school was built in the late 50s and was modernized and expanded in the 90s. (By the way, on the third day of school this year, one of the ventilation fans caught fire, made a lot of smoke and caused the school to lose power. We also lost all ventilation for about a month after the fire.)
Yeah it's not my first time dealing with alarms not loud enough I had a feeling they wouldn't be loud enough on low volume so I left them and no one said anything
I couldn’t agree more. It’s surprising particularly with piezos how unlike bells they don’t often seem to be able to project the sound through walls so well on low volume
Wow! Awesome job as always. It was kinda weird how the school had the old system setup with the wires like that. It was definitely hard to tell which was which.
It's funny seeing you and the others upgrading a schools fire alarm, while my school doesn't have anything fire safety related except a fire extinguisher.
You are inspiring me to become an Inspector/tech in the future, I really enjoy watching your videos and they make it feel like I’m ready for the job whenever I decide to start it. Keep up the great content! I know that you were told to set the alarms on low volume but the fact that you said they wouldn’t be loud enough just proves how much you care for the safety of the school. Keep up the great content and I can’t wait to see future replacements!! And yes, majority of the schools from the 50s/60s use black and white wires mainly because of how it was back then, I also learned that myself. Can’t wait to see more!!
Thank you for the comment, it is great to hear that my videos could help or at least someone enjoyed. Have good luck with whatever path you go down for your career.
The moment when I got home and I checked my notifications on RU-vid and I saw that you installed a new fire alarm system in the school, I start freaking out
Going from a typical Canadian fire alarm system of the time to what feels more like a typical modern USA fire alarm system. Edwards is still pretty common in Canada, but Notifier is rarer. Interesting how that gymnasium used an old Edwards Adaptahorn as a school bell. I've seen several older Canadian schools often use 4" or 6" bells as school bells alongside 10" fire alarm bells, so you can at least tell their sound apart (as the fire alarm bells would be louder than the school bells).
We used to do it with our internal ground faults however they don't want us repairing internal ground faults anymore that we're not supposed to do that
Fun fact: Our school Fire alarm system is very different then American and Canadian Fire Alarm System, You Guys Call your Fire alarm pull thingy Pull Stations but as a Australian, we call ours Call Points, and We have Fire alarm Speakers, Call points Strobes, and Bells. And we don't really have Much Sirens as in Air Raid Sirens in, America and Canada, the last time i heard Siren, is in Queensland. It's interesting how different Fire Alarm systems work.
At least they gave you 2 different colors, I did one job on a condo building built in the 70’s and they use all one color wire different by floor though. So first floor you had like 2 oranges, 2nd 2 blues, 3rd 2 purple. I gave up and put a battery on the color in the panel so I could figure it out as I went. The wires were textured so you were suppose to be able to tell the difference but they didn’t even use that consistently. I also got electrocuted in the elevator shaft swapping the top of shaft detector, for some reason the I beam was hot when I was at the top of shaft.
That sounds horrible at least with wires that are coloured differently whether it's consistent or not you can still cross reference between two different boxes
Great video, can’t wait for the rest of the videos. How come the intrusion alarm was beeping and what did you do to the rest of the detectors which were left over and what did you do with the 851. Keep up the great work!
Intrusion alarm was in trouble because it monitors the fire alarm. the intrusion alarm is also the dialler to call out and the fire alarm system had been ripped apart so it wasn't happy
150 smokes and 10 horns is wild. The residential work I do is opposite, we put 3 smokes in a basement and end up putting 7 horns cause they need 1 in every apartment. Keeping the horns loud was def the right call but I still worry that there's nowhere near enough horns in there
Only 13 or 14 smoke detectors if I recall. the rest were heat detectors because it's a non-sprinklered building you have to install heat detectors as a substitute
It’s 3 in the morning I should be asleep but no i decide to watch an hour long video on someone installing a fire alarm system (not saying I regret this decision)
Meanwhile our school fire alarms fail at doing Code 3 properly lmao, It's a notifier panel too, it has System sensor spectre alert classics. Yet every time they go off the alarm will sound twice and then stop randomly not completing Code 3.
Nice work so far! Also, what all was saved from the system? I was also surprised to hear music in the background as you usually edit it out of the video to protect against copyright.
bro my school was built in the 80s and still has (mostly) the original system. Simplex mechanical horns like the 9838 and old strobe plates along with some old T bar pull stations. However, some parts of the school have been replaces with Gentex commander 1s along with notifier NBG-12s and theres even 1 hidden commander 2/3 in one of the downstairs hallways.
@@TorchRBX 9838 my beloved! My elementary/middle school had them on the 4903-9101 plates, and I hated them as a student but greatly appreciate them as an adult alarm enthusiast.
Awesome job! Isn’t it amazing when the guy behind you burns you by not making a wire list or notes. Not your fault but should have been done back when the wires were ran.
11:23 the one thing you’re never ever supposed to do with a Durabel bell; “remove the gong” Did you save one though along with the panel? Such treasures these vintage Edwards components are. Also can I have one too? Always wanted my own vintage Durabel.
I might try and put some up on eBay we'll see I'd like to keep a couple myself as I don't have any working ones. since I'm not paid for my work that is my payment is getting the old equipment
Nice video. One question, why did you have to remove the old bells? They are much nicer and cooler than boring ringing. Bells are what fire alarms should be.
Because bells are less reliable and though I agree that they do sound nice we need all the devices to be matching and be able to know the exact current draw to do calculations
My apartment building is outdated on the fire alarm system. Hallways and laundry rooms have fire alarms and all the apartments only have heat sensors. One at the entrance of the apartment and one heat panel above the range. I can barely hear the fire alarm going off in the middle of the night!
That is honestly pretty shitty that the color coding was jacked up, I mean, yeah I get that it didn't matter with the Edwards/EST 6500, but still... probably should've had a consistent positive and negative, not good. And I am not blasting you and your crew by any means. You guys did a good job actually.
Well, I had one more thing about the white wire when it comes to go behind someone else’s work you really need to just trace out the wiring and figure it out but with an alarm system installed like that or fire alarm system, there should be some type of schematic already drawn up for it course it may just give you a general idea not an exact but then again like I said you’re going behind somebody else’s work, so it really depends on What they want to hook it up at the time so I got a question about on somebody’s pool station you’re putting and I’m seeing these nice red rings that are attached to the side of them that’s something I’ve never seen before is that to keep people from running into it and breaking the station off or is it serving the purpose?
Well, first time to say you’re doing a good job on what you’re doing second when it comes to annunciators depending on your current, you should be able to wire in more to accommodate the long hallway if y’all chose to or if the school or establishment one and more courses a cost increase on that but anyway And you mention something about the white wire and low voltage applications from low voltage applications. White wire was all it could be hot nine times out of 10. It also could be a neutral wire and if you wanted to know which ones are hot or neutral I don’t know why you guys are not using wire tracers unless you’re single or tone toner basically to tone out those cables, unless you do it the same time but I suspect this is probably an older video because it seems like I’ve seen this one before but I can’t remember anyway you’re doing a good job for your age when I was your age I was doing this stuff set back there we were wiringthe things that you’re replacing now except for you’re actually getting paid to do it so you’re lucky compared to most kids are my age back then it was older people that did this kind of stuff anyway have a good one be watching more of your videos
With that pull station that one that had the small back box I would probably replace it if I was with you with a SB-IO back box for the BG12 series of pull stations
Yes conventional systems can always be turned into addressable as long as they are isolated properly which is usually per fire zone which they would already be wired as a zone per fire zone usually
Great job but I think for people who don’t know anything about this stuff though (me) you need to speak a little more “english” to explain what things are… I almost had to click off the video due to all these “nerd like” terms… either way I love what your doing so don’t get me wrong… it’s just you kept stating the objects with the technical name rather then making it understandable for a broad RU-vid audience 💯💯 good job though bro 🔥
Thanks. It's a fine line as far as hell to explain things for sure where I agree some things are complex and tricky to understand. So lots of times I try and explain them more basic but then people get upset for me for taking too long so some videos are a little complex and then some are explained more so. Just can be difficult to keep everybody satisfied. Thanks for watching.
@@alexgilbert2 great question (as a lower level FA enthusiast) after looking at some of Honeywel's System Sensor public memos, I've noted that right now you can order the indoor LED Strobes and HS (wall and ceiling mounts?) . The legacy ones will be availible to order till December 15th (or while supplies last) Sometime in early 2024, Honeywell will update and replace the outdoor (Advances), (Xenon L Series) chimes, and voice Evac varients will be updated to the new LED standard too. With all that in mind, I bet possibly soon you could start seeing these devices in new applications any day now. I'd say the determining factor might be device availability from FA techs/installers inventory. Cause at least where I'm from, the techs service my work's building still have unopened P2R advances for some reason (as of this past March) when they added several new alarms to our building and even suprisingly replaced a L Series with a P2R in my work's basement 🤷🏻.
Have any customers opted for the systems that provide the slow whooping alerts followed by a voice alert? What makes them choose those systems over the standard beepers?
Gonna keep the old panel? I know it’s internally grounded, but maybe you could fix/replace the bad component(s). Also could I potentially buy the old iO panel off you? I would like something to replace my ground issue fireshield panel. I could use the old monitor modules for the conventional devices. No need to worry about how I’ll re-program the system, I can do that too.
IMO connecting the old zone lines directly to a battery to check polarity is a bad idea. There's too much potential for a short circuit to happen, either by accidentally touching wires or by a device activating. Your idea of grounding one wire and checking continuity is better in my opinion.
@@nics-systems-electric A 9v battery should be pretty safe because they can't push much current. I thought you were talking about a lead acid panel backup battery which will easily push enough current to melt the insulation on 18awg wiring. Even with a 9v battery I'd suggest using a series resistor to limit fault current. If for nothing else 9v batteries are expensive.
If I'm not mistaken you didn't need to go through all that trouble checking polarity. Since you're redoing the wiring at the panel and at literally every device you should be able to go with normal coloring and it will work out in the end. AFAIK the only way it wouldn't work is if there's a junction box you don't touch _and_ the colors are crossed inside that box. Obviously the work is already done but that's what I would have suggested.
Not really sure what you mean addressable devices are polarity sensitive a conventional zone is not therefore when you put a device up there is no way of knowing what is positive positive vs negative at your device location without checking with a metre
@@nics-systems-electric If you did a full rewire you could easily switch to a sensible color scheme. Assuming you redid every splice or connection as part of replacing every device you effectively did a complete rewire. The only remaining part would be the physical wires embedded in the walls and I can say with certainty that there isn't a polarity swap in an unbroken length of wire. I hope this explanation makes sense.
@@eDoc2020 I would not consider that a rewire when you were leaving the existing cables in place what you just explained is basically what was done where every box was opened and polarity corrected if needed but messing around with stuff is not a good idea when you're dealing with mineral insulated cables
I've always wondered how the portables are connected to the Fire Alarm System? Due to the portables get moved to different schools, hence the name, "Portable."
@@nics-systems-electric Ah! So schools that have portables keep extra devices to put in the portable after it arrives at the school? Then remove them when the portable is being moved to a different school.
Yeah. For example, my elementary school got a portable in 2018. The portable had System Sensor Spectralert (sorry if I spelled it wrong) classic horn strobes, system sensor heat detectors, and Fire Lite BG-10’s. The system in the school is a Simplex 4007es so they replaced them with SmartSync TrueAlert horn strobes, addressable smoke detectors, and addressable dual action t-bars. Sadly, they left the outdoor alarm and didn’t hook it up.
Now i have a question you see im getting an EST 6630 Edwerds fire controll pannel a bit over 30 years old works like a the best thing ever no problem with it never had a ground fault once. im also getting the bells and the pull stations with it anyhting i should know abt this type of pannel anything helps becouse im just starting a likeing in this stuff ive already started with a DSC Neo and a DSC powerseries (the powerseries works like a charm) im able to code those blind now. so il ask again anything i should know abt this pannel?
also these installers are seeming lazy theve done 50% of it left it and said there waiting for parts to come in and it beens 2 months and they havnt showed up once :/
Never heard of a 6630 unless you mean 6632 which they aren't too complicated but they do have two separate power supplies both need to be fully hooked up to be trouble free unless you disconnect the second board in the second bay as far as ground faults that is a lie if they told you it's never had one every panel has to have been tested for ground fault annually as part of an annual inspection
Bells are audible only and do wear out... Said that, if they're motor bells, they're generally more reliable than breakerpoint bells. You'd have to know exactly what the bells draw for current to properly create battery calculations. Also if they can work with syncronization which is most likely going to be required on a new system.
Despite the Honeywell brands such as Notifier obviously being the superior product, I honestly prefer every pull station Edwards ever made, as well as every single T bar style pull station (yes, even Simplex) over anything the Honeywell brands (or Siemens) ever made. Why? Because they seem far less susceptible to false activation. On the Edwards and T bar style pull stations, you pull outwards. Siemens and Honeywell push inwards and down, or straight down. Ever see the viral video where someone was playing catch with a hair brush, hit a BG12 in a diagonal downward motion, and activated it? Never going to happen with a 270-SPO, ever.
Honeywell and therefore notifier does offer MPS series of pull stations which are a metal T-bar pull station sold in addressable and conventional and can be made double action if you add the flip up cover
Even old schools in the USA when you update to a new system has to go by new law strobe or horn strobe in every single classrooms the elementary school by my house is being updates to the new law
@@vinnieversaci452 must not have been in the states I've been in as in most places grandfathered in buildings do not need to be brought to new standards as it's impractical and unrealistic
That’s not how it is in my area of the US (ND). All of the elementary schools in my district (most having systems from the 90’s with mechanical horn strobes only in the hallways), were replaced with Simplex 4007es systems about 10 years ago. They just left or replaced the old horn strobes and didn’t really add any. There was even one case at a school that I had summer daycare at when I was little that had EST Integrity chime strobes in the hallways and classrooms in one part that were replaced with TrueAlert es horn strobes only in the hallways and they just put cover plates over the classroom spots. That one always confuses me as I think they should have replaced the classroom ones with remote strobes. In new schools they are having remote strobes or speaker strobes in the classrooms but not the old ones. One other example is my middle school. It is a fairly new building from 2008 with a 4100u system. In the original part, they have no signals in the classrooms.
