The Siren Board

Brendan Ahern wrote:No the town isn't broke, I was talking about the sirens. Park Ridge is a very wealthy suburb.

They are wealthy but they have lost a ton of money due to the recent uptown upgrade. They've been having meeting on how to get more money, their solution is to open more restaurants up.

Pardon the "bump" but I just found a few SRNBs (with large FS symbol) got replaced by 130s

Unless those were hit by lightning and are completely unusable, that is a huge waste of money...

So apparently 8 years is the lifespan of a siren... I just can't even. There is no justifiable reason to replace a working SRNB with a 130, they are almost the same siren with barely any noticeable difference in output up close or in the distance. just put a new panel on the old siren and be done with it.

Exactly. A city near me is replacing their 2001s with Whelens. I think that these ones were damaged by a tornado though. But I can see why they would go for those, because they have the voice capability, but it is sometimes unintelligible.

This all just makes me think of how any Werden P-127s in Hamilton County's system were forced to have a short life span. They were each purchased and installed by the communities they are in, and Hamilton County wanted them replaced, because they lacked battery backup, and of course it couldn't be added with their AC motors. They were all replaced with T-128s in 2012, and the one with the shortest life was the one in Cheviot, which was installed around 2005-2006. The other three (2 in Newtown, 1 in Milford) were all installed in the late 90s-early 2000s.

Since this was bumped, I will add that the 2001-DCs that formed this topic were replaced with 2001-130s in October 2015.

Siren makers tend to endorse replacing sirens ASAP. Sometimes this includes sirens that haven't quite reached the end of their service lives.

ACA did this with the Hurricane 130 - you often found a Penetrator or Alertronic in place of a relatively-new Hurricane back in the 1980s-1990s. This is one reason why the Hurricane is so rare: most of them were removed early on. While this was justified due to the Hurricane's impractical design, it was still wasteful to trash something that had just been built. The only Hurricanes that survived were in cities that casually resisted upgrading until it became a necessity.

The Werden P-127s are a mixed bag. At first sight they appear to be little more than re-branded RM-127s but careful inspection reveals some differences. To the eyes of Hamilton County they would have already been considered "old" - the lack of DC battery backup didn't help matters. Still very wasteful since those P-127s were presumably scrapped.

The average service life of a rotating mechanical siren is 25-30 years. Once it hits that age the siren should be overhauled to ensure it keeps running effectively. This doesn't mean the siren will automatically break down if it's run beyond 30 years, but you do run the risk of bigger problems turning up later.

The more complex a siren, the shorter its service life will be. DC battery backup sirens are a bit more restricted due to their more complex layout - 15-20 years is the average service life for these.
Since the first generation 2001-DCs are already pushing 15 years old, this is close enough to life-expired in the eyes of some cities - and naturally Federal would rather throw up new 2001s instead of service the old ones.

SuperBanshee wrote:The Werden P-127s are a mixed bag. At first sight they appear to be little more than re-branded RM-127s but careful inspection reveals some differences. To the eyes of Hamilton County they would have already been considered "old" - the lack of DC battery backup didn't help matters. Still very wasteful since those P-127s were presumably scrapped.

Very true, though it's hard to imagine those sirens as being "old" when the county is keeping several 2001s that were installed between the years 1992-2004, and T-128s that were installed between the years 1997-2009. If Werden removed any of those P-127s himself, he most likely brought each one back to his shop, and could reinstall each one in another county if he hasn't done so yet, like he has done with many older sirens.

Stevan Z wrote:Since this was bumped, I will add that the 2001-DCs that formed this topic were replaced with 2001-130s in October 2015.

Off subject, what is with that major fail, the wooden utility pole right in front of the pedestrian crosswalk signal on the metal pole.