Recently I have noticed that they are installing a fire alarm system in my building with pull stations and in some places detectors. As of now they have installed a bunch of boxes throughout the building with rigid pipe conduit and a single red wire fished through.
I noticed that in one spot there is a run of about 4~5 feet in the ceiling where the red wire is exposed without conduit. It goes through the wall and into a junction box mounted in the garbage room.
Is the purpose of this red wire only for a 9 volt signal between alarms? Is that why you don't need to run it inside conduit? Or is this a major code violation? It would seem silly to spend all of this money to secure our building from fire and them have a dumb mistake which compromises the entire system.
Thanks.
-ben