Question:
Had one of my customers buy a building other day and it has a old firelite sensican panel in it which i was getting ready to take out becuse the board had completely burned up. Started taking the system apart starting with 120 vac and when i started tracing the 120 wires found 2 ft of flex and then just open single conductor wires tied to cieling support for about 2 feet then tied to a piece of romex which was plugged into an outlet in the buildings garage. the ground instead of being run with electrical ground was run to a local water pipoe and this created a diverted ground path and showed why the panel burned up and part of the wall was scorcehed and breaker took so long to trip. Absolutley unbieliable some f--g moron installer/owner to f---g cheap to run down 2 blocks to hardware store for the correct wire. Thank god this idiot is no longer installing alarms. I let company who bought his accounts know what i found so they can check his other work if the feel so initaited to do so but they have just as bed a reputaion with there work.

Answer: I've seen several systems that fall short of what is required, it doesn't necessarily mean they were installed that way, nor that the original installer was responsible for the current state of the systemIt's also worth remembering that older systems do not have to meet current codes. They only need to meet the code that was in effect when they were installed. So, a seemingly glaring mistake like not using a smoke detector to protect the FACP is not necessarily a mistake, if the system is old enough.