That Tuesday where every alarm panel fought me

Last month I had a day where three different houses had panels that just would not cooperate. First one was a wired DSC that kept giving me a ground fault on zone 2, spent an hour tracing a wire that looked fine. Second house had a wireless Honeywell that wouldn't sync with a new sensor, had to reset the whole thing. By the third job I was ready to pack it in, but it turned out to be a loose transformer on a Vista panel, fixed it in ten minutes. Has anyone else had a day where every single install decides to go sideways like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

lee_reed1mo ago

I had a day like that back in March with three straight commercial fire alarm inspections. First building had an old Simplex that kept throwing trouble for a ground fault that didn't exist anywhere on the meter. Second job was a Notifier panel that wouldn't accept a new detector address no matter how many times I reprogrammed it. Third one was a simple duct detector replacement that turned into a four hour nightmare because the wiring was labeled wrong from the original install. By the time I got home that night I was questioning if I even knew how to do this job anymore. Sure makes you appreciate the days when everything goes smooth.

hart.sage1mo ago

You ever have one of those days that just makes you want to throw your tools in the lake? I used to think fire alarm work was pretty straightforward, you know, just swap a sensor and move on. But after a job exactly like yours back in April, where a brand new addressable detector kept giving me a "device not responding" error even after I triple checked the dip switches and the panel config, I totally get the feeling. It's those days where you start second guessing every wire and screw you've ever touched, but man, when it actually works right, it feels like a huge win.

torres.grant1mo ago

Heard a buddy tell me a story just like that @lee_reed, had him pulling his hair out over a ground fault that kept coming and going.