Safety is of paramount importance to parents, no matter what age their children are. Kathie Maxwell says that when parents inquire about placing their children in her day care center, safety issues typically top their list of questions — and rightfully so.

“Parents look for a good fire-alarm system and a good security system, and those things are important to them. If you have any common sense at all, you want that protection for your children,” says  Maxwell, who owns the Children’s Haven Child Care Center in Denver with her husband.

That’s why when Maxwell and her directors give tours at the center, they point out the new ExitPoint™ directional sound system that helps safeguard their young charges.

“It was a very smart move to do sounders versus horns and strobes,” says Efrain Cordova, an electrical contractor with Competitive Electric Inc. in Littleton, Colo. Efrain installed ExitPoint at the center, as well as a fire-alarm package that includes standard audible/visible devices.

Test Runs Prove System Effectiveness

Children’s Haven sets off ExitPoint during its monthly fire drills so that the children become accustomed to the sound and practice reacting to it. During their first ExitPoint drill, the center’s full building evacuation time dropped from about two minutes to one.

Although infants and toddlers are too young to evacuate the same way the older children do — and by law, their rooms must have their own outside exits — ExitPoint sounders are located above their exits to provide extra assistance for adult caregivers. “Even if the room filled with smoke and was in pitch-black darkness, they’d still get out,” says Cordova.

Sounders, in Cordova’s opinion, are “10-fold better than horns for a standard fire-alarm system” in helping people evacuate quickly.

Tags: Directional sound

Posted in Cover Features, Education, Intelligent Detection, Summer 2006

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