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Saw a 40 year old fire panel in a Cleveland church basement and it still armed every night
Was doing a walkthrough at a church over on Euclid Ave last month and the custodian pulled me down to the basement to show me their old control panel. It was a 12 zone unit from around 1984, all mechanical relays, and he said it arms and disarms fine every single night. I pulled the cover off and the board looked brand new, no dust, no corrosion, guy has been vacuuming it out once a year since he started there in 1996. Made me think about how many of these new panels get swapped out at year 5 because a board fries or the app stops working. Any of you ever talk a customer into keeping an old panel alive instead of pushing an upgrade?
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willow_garcia1mo ago
That custodian is the real hero here. I ran into almost the same thing, a 1987 panel in a school gym that still trips and resets like it was built last week. The guy there opens it up twice a year, blows it out with canned air, checks the relay contacts and thats it. Meanwhile I have watched three year old panels die because a power surge cooked the main board. Half the time these old units outlive the new ones because there is nothing fancy in them to break. No touchscreen, no firmware, no cloud login that stops working when the company drops support. I have talked two customers into keeping theirs and just adding new smoke heads where they needed them. Cost them way less than a full swap and both are still running.
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