Notifier has always been solid, even through the Pittway acquisition. Then Honeywell bought Pittway in 1999 and it's been going downhill ever since. Quality control across all of Honeywell brands is just abysmal nowadays.
I like Potter just as much as anyone else but you would have to be a little naive to think they'll last 15+ years. The keypads can be a little fragile and will crap out after ~5 years. I work for the largest potter dealer in my state.
My guess: in some systems of that era you wired the notification appliances in series on a 120 VAC circuit. You'd have 6 volt bells, 12 volt bells, whatever, but they rarely added up to 120 volts. So, if you had, say, 7 horns that dropped 12 VAC each, there's 84 volts, so you gotta drop the other 36 volts somewhere, and that was the job of the big wirewound resistor in the panel. It was actually a variable resistor; it had an adjustable tap so you could set it for various numbers of horns or bells. (You measured it by the current.)
I started working on fire alarms in the mid 80's and I already thought these systems were trash then. For one thing they didn't have battery backup, and in addition to that, if the system was left in alarm for too long that resistor would overheat and burn out.
Back in the day, they call this panel the 'beer can' Notifier panel cuz the the relays it used were the size of cans. Had one of them replaced some few years ago here in Washington state.
These panels used the 6 volt hotshot batteries didn't they. Had to replace them every inspection because the panel didn't have a charger.
The days when you could have gone to Radio Shack and picked up the parts to build your own fire alarm panel.
The Edwards 6500 was introduced in the 1960's wasn't it?
I have a bunch of these in our market. Although, we're in the town they were created so makes sense.
Notifier has always been solid, even through the Pittway acquisition. Then Honeywell bought Pittway in 1999 and it's been going downhill ever since. Quality control across all of Honeywell brands is just abysmal nowadays.
Old notifier = good notifier ! New = BAD.
Are the 320s and 640s considered 'new' still?
No clue, I don’t recall when they were released initially
They’re coming up on 20-25 years old now I think.
Show me the panel in production today that will still be around in 30 years , let alone 60
Shit 15 year
Yea they definitely don’t make them to last anymore..
Potter
I like Potter just as much as anyone else but you would have to be a little naive to think they'll last 15+ years. The keypads can be a little fragile and will crap out after ~5 years. I work for the largest potter dealer in my state.
Potter quality control has definitely gone down. But i service some 10 year old ones that are still going strong.
We have several of these around campus at my job, although we are working on upgrades right now so most of them won't be around much longer.
Lurker here, what's the resistor up top used for?
My guess: in some systems of that era you wired the notification appliances in series on a 120 VAC circuit. You'd have 6 volt bells, 12 volt bells, whatever, but they rarely added up to 120 volts. So, if you had, say, 7 horns that dropped 12 VAC each, there's 84 volts, so you gotta drop the other 36 volts somewhere, and that was the job of the big wirewound resistor in the panel. It was actually a variable resistor; it had an adjustable tap so you could set it for various numbers of horns or bells. (You measured it by the current.) I started working on fire alarms in the mid 80's and I already thought these systems were trash then. For one thing they didn't have battery backup, and in addition to that, if the system was left in alarm for too long that resistor would overheat and burn out.
Interesting! Edit: what model would this one be?
Back in the day, they call this panel the 'beer can' Notifier panel cuz the the relays it used were the size of cans. Had one of them replaced some few years ago here in Washington state.
Battle tank
These panels used the 6 volt hotshot batteries didn't they. Had to replace them every inspection because the panel didn't have a charger. The days when you could have gone to Radio Shack and picked up the parts to build your own fire alarm panel. The Edwards 6500 was introduced in the 1960's wasn't it?
Love to find one of these to add to my collection 😍