The Siren Board

I was talking to a friend in a near by FD, and they want to try air horns. They wanted to know if they would need a high capacity air compressor. I told them it depends on what they are using/ how much it is going to be used (I might be wicked wrong). So I would like to know what I should tell them. I want to help them in there choice, so please give me some info! They are going to sell their siren to me if they do use a air horn system, but I am not doing this out of greed, I want them to make the right choice. The committee was complaining about how much juice the siren took as well. The Department wants to expand, which is why they are talking about replacement.

The old air horn system in my town had a tank about the size of an outdoor propane tank and a gigantic compressor of unknown horsepower. Our area had frequent power failures in the winter, so it was important to have enough air for the duration of the outage. Then again, that tank powered two large horns and eight small ones.

My recommendation is to use several horns of different pitches to cover various frequencies. Many systems use horns of the same pitch, which can get lost in ambient noise. Even horns which sound a tuned musical chord can be effective as long as they do not sound too much like a train horn. Deep pitches are best to prevent this.

Signalling will work best if there is an established code for fires versus other emergencies. Sounding the horns for one long, sustained blast, will only annoy the neighbors. Remember that unlike a siren, horns reach their peak decibel output instantly. If there are homes close by, a pre-alarm might be appreciated.

Well, they only activate the siren for hi-band calls (fire) so it would not make much of a difference. Thank you for the info. They are having training tommarow night, and my contact still needs information (size of tank and compressor). I would also like a place to point them to (such as Federal sig.) but only more horn-based. This is pretty important to them, so more info would be blessed.

I know little about Air-horns but I'm thinking that F.S. has some horns in different frequencies on their website.A Diaphone would be your best bet but are in short supply.

coreyhudson2 wrote:I know little about Air-horns but I'm thinking that F.S. has some horns in different frequencies on their website.A Diaphone would be your best bet but are in short supply.

Diaphones are not a viable option anymore. As i'm sure you know, they're no longer in production and finding any not in service in good working order is very hard. Best bet, contact Federal.

Sentry also makes air horns.

Thought i would just throw it out there.

Try these:

http://www.cunninghamairwhistles.com/

http://www.kahlenberg.com/

http://www.kockumsonics.com/flash_content.html

Viable Options



Sound--->http://www.kahlenberg.com/audio/s203.mp3

Those are some good leads, thank you.