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The vast interior of Norwich Cathedral was an acoustically demanding challenge when it came to installing a new voice evacuation system. But Maxi Fire-Cryer industrial sounders from Vimpex were judged to be up to the job, delivering a sound output of 116dBA.
Six of them were installed in the Trifirium above the Nave and in the north and south Transcepts, with six standard Fire-Cryers in the cathedral’s offices, shop and storage area.
“The specification for the new system called for three independent members of the cathedral’s staff to approve the sound quality and sign-off the project,” said Paul Field, project engineer at installation company BBC Fire Protection. “They found that the Fire-Cryers gave good intelligibility throughout the building – quite an achievement considering relatively few sounders were used to cover the interior of this grand cathedral.”
Although the Fire-Cryer can broadcast up to seven different messages from a library of thousands – many of which are multi-lingual – for the sake of simplicity the cathedral has used just one. The unit requires no special wiring and can be retrofitted to existing installations. It can be fully synchronised and has a low current consumption, allowing straightforward replacement of existing sounders and bells.