Farenhyt Fire-Alarm Control Panels
The fire-alarm system of the 14-story Plaza Condominium on Atlantic City's Boardwalk simply self-destructed one day. Installed when the building opened in 1965, the system had been out of production for some 15 years, with no technical support and no parts still being manufactured for it. When it finally gave out, it was unsalvageable.
That turned out to be a blessing: The outdated system wasn't "addressable" and so couldn't pinpoint which sensor in the building had gone off. Sounding devices were only installed in the hallways, and not in the apartments themselves. And the computer chips? They may as well have been chocolate chips.
The Plaza updated to the Farenhyt system manufactured by the Honeywell subsidiary Silent Knight. Specifically, it chose the IFP-1000 http://www.farenhyt.com/htmfiles/upIFP1000.htm model, though the line spans a range from the IFP-50 and IFP-100 to the more recently introduced IFP-1000VIP.
In general, they can handle anywhere from 50 to 1,594 addressable modules throughout your building, and can use your existing wiring, allowing retrofit applications. And of course, it has all the bells and whistles — almost literally! — that a modern-day system would have, including remote access for installer troubleshooting and features to compensate for and help reduce the number of false alarms.
Ancillary devices can included sounding devices in each unit, and even a voice-evacuation system, so that, for example, firefighters can announce specific instructions to go to the roof, or that the east stairwell is blocked. Or, you could just yell, "Ahhhhh! There's a fire!," but that probably isn't the best use of such sophisticated equipment.
Silent Knight • 7550 Meridian Circle, Suite 100, Maple Grove , Minn. 55369-4927 • (763) 493-6435 • toll-free (800) 328-0103 • dawn.hunter@honeywell.com