Thunderbolt Blowers Mounted INSIDE Buildings?

[fire_freak_57]

I've lived near Cuyahoga County, OH for about 4 years or so, and I have extensively photographed most of the last remaining operational Thunderbolts in the county. If you know Cuyahoga County's CD System as far as the history goes, most of the Thunderbolts in the Greater Cleveland metro area were single-toned, 1000 models, branded by Federal Enterprises, and installed from 1951-1953. They featured the 6M series blowers on them. The Thunderbolts were all-roof mounted as far as I can tell. The three remaining units in the county (1 inactive, abandoned in place in Cleveland, two in operational service in Independence) are all-roof mounted. They are all jailbar grille units; consistent with the first few Thunderbolts that were ever installed. The old CD system also featured Federal Sign and Signal branded (as well as some Federal Signal Corp. branded) Model 5A/7A single toned omni-directional sirens, as well as more common 5AT/7AT dual-toned omni-directional sirens. The Model 5/7's and 5T/7T's were pole mounted for the most part; again the only last few units in operation are in Independence, and those are pole mounted, but the ones that used to be in Seven Hills (at least one of them) was mounted on the roof atop their FD (a 2001-130 on a pole now sits at that location; Seven Hills replaced those 5/7's in 2015). Anyways, on to the Thunderbolts: their BLOWERS are NOWHERE to be found. I've done some research, and since they indeed have blowers and they're not mounted on the roof with the siren head and the standpipe goes inside the buildings they are in, my most logical explanation at this time is to conclude they're mounted inside the building (because checking Google Maps confirms they aren't on the roof).

My question is: are there any other installations that were conducted in this manner, and were they common?

If you want to look at Google to see for yourself, the first Thunderbolt is on the Independence Service Center and the second Thunderbolt is on the roof of Mill and Motion Inc., a machine shop.

[TOMMY_from_sp]

Most roof mounted tbolts had the blower in the building offen in the basement

[nvanw27]

unless i'm really mistaken, and i prove to be sometimes, the grand rapids MI thunderbolt mounted atop the police department has the blower in the building somewhere.

[carexpertandy]

Several of Cincinnati's old Thunderbolts have/had the blowers inside the building. It's really not an uncommon thing. If you continue to find more pictures or videos of Thunderbolts around the country, you will likely find several more that clearly don't have a blower on the rooftop or anywhere outside the building.

[Brendan W]

The 1003 in Atlanta, GA has its boxes and blower inside the building it is on.

[jacob585]

The system 7000 thunderbolts had there blowers mounted in a steel box along with the generator and what else is in there.

[Tyler]

This piece from the manual will answer a lot of your questions on roof mounted Thunderbolts.

Screen Shot 2018-01-25 at 1.54.14 AM.png (796.3 KiB) Viewed 6455 times

[fire_freak_57]

This piece from the manual will answer a lot of your questions on roof mounted Thunderbolts.

Thanks for clearing that up! I figured that was where they were but wasn't sure. What's strange is the one in Cuyahoga Heights as well as the roof-mounted one in Cleveland (which is obviously no longer in service) have their blowers roof-mounted, but again, the buildings are different in both of those cases.

And in case anyone's curious, I do have a picture of the setup from the Mill and Motion Thunderbolt handy on my school computer (and yes, I am aware the RCM and radio cabinets are inside the building as well).

[nvanw27]

The famous Low-Pitched thunderbolt atop the business building in Big Rapids MI was roof mounted and i'm pretty sure that the blower was inside the building and is probably still there after being replaced with a Modulator.

Also, there is a Thundebolt in Reed City MI atop the city hall that is inactive. It needs to be added to the MI state siren map. It was roof mounted, but the blower was atopthe building. totally irrelavent to the topic, but was on the same system of the BR lowbolt.

[jacob585]

heres one 41°16'50.9"N 75°57'44.5"W (yes its a 7000)