atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Wiring - Telecom Carriers - Trunks & Services Security, Alarms and Paging Some Vista 20 help?

Hi everyone:

Am a new subscriber to the forum - I've been reading posts for awhile, and there are lots of knowledgeable folks on this board ... glad to be a part of it.

I'm hoping I could ask a few questions about our Vista 20 alarm/fire control system from Ademco.

We have these Vista 20 systems installed on our campus (a church, a school, a house and an office). The building I have questions about is the school.

Let me start off by saying that I know for sure what we have is not 100% up to code. We are inspected every year by the fire marshal, and he's happy with what we have, so I guess I'm happy, too. We have a renovation coming down the pike in the next 5-7 years, so I'm sure this will all be replaced with new equipment when the time comes. We're going to try to keep this "limping along" for the meantime.

We were having a new roof put on the school, and the roofing company wasn't careful in covering the roof while they were working on it, and yep ... you guessed it ... water all over the second floor of our school.

Water came pouring through a large section of ceiling, passing completely through two of our smoke detectors that were mounted on the ceiling. Now, the control pads are all showing FIRE TROUBLE 01. Will replacing these units work, or is there a fault in the wiring, and we'll have to do all new wiring for them as well?

The second question I have is about conducting fire drills in the school. We have a Simplex 2001 fire control panel, with pull boxes throughout the school. The Simplex box is somehow hooked into the Ademco box. We discovered not too long ago that when a detector detects smoke and sounds the alarm, both the Ademco sirens and the Simplex sirens sound at the same time. We have been conducting fire drills for the last several years using only the Simplex system, but we now want to conduct drills EXACTLY as they would happen in a real emergency and sound box sets of sirens.

The suggestion was made to silence the Ademco sirens and only sound the Simplex sirens, but the problem with that setup is that there is an Ademco siren mounted on the outside of the building, and it serves as the only audible alert to people in the other building that something is wrong in the school. So ... we really don't want to turn them off.

We also discovered that when a pull station is activated, only the Simplex sirens sound.

My questions:

1. Is there a way to program the Ademco system that when a pull box is activated via the Simplex system, that both sets of sirens would sound?

2. If that's not possible, is there a way to program a button on the control pad to sound the fire sirens (like a fire panic), and then we would also manually sound the Simplex sirens, as done before?

I hope that this isn't too too confusing, and that I explained it well enough. If you need clarification or any other info. that I can provide, feel free to let me know.

I know this is LLLLLLLLLLONG! Thanks much for reading, and for your thoughts and suggestions.

Take care,
Michael/AdemcoWisc

Hello and welcome to the board Michael.

Before we get started I would recommend that you get a licensed alarm company to help you with this situation.

The answer to your first question:
Yes, replacing the detectors should take care of the trouble condition.

Yes IF there is at least one unused zone in the Ademco panel. This is the part the Alarm company will need to do.

Thanks, Bobby, for your post - appreciate it. Yep - we have the alarm company coming out on Wednesday to take a look at it ... I just thought I could get a heads up as to what we might be in for when Wednesday rolls around.

I read another post on here (I think you might have posted the reply, actually) about creating a fire panic button using Zone 95. Is that something that we could utilize as well and activate the sirens from the control pad?

The vendor we use is wonderful, but Honeywell/Ademco systems are not their specialty, and they sometimes have to leave to look stuff up. I'm trying to get as much info. together as possible so that they can hopefully fix everything with one service call ... wishful thinking on my part!

Thanks again,
Michael/AdemcoWisc

Yep, you can have a manual fire button programmed in the Ademco system (activated from the keypad) but it may not activate the Simplex system strobes and horns when it is pressed.

Michael you can program one of your panic buttons as ZONE 95, this will indeed activate the sirens.

Thanks for your continued replies. Really appreciate all of the help. Bobby - you had mentioned that it would be possible to activate both sets of sirens (Simplex and Ademco) if there was an extra zone open on the Ademco panel. I checked the panel, and it looks like we have at least one, possibly, two zones open. Would you be able to go into some detail as to how this might be done so that I could share this with the vendor when they come on Wednesday?

Is Zone 95 a specific zone that corresponds to one of the four panic buttons on the Ademco keypad? I get the part about programming Zone 95 as a fire zone using *56, but I'm stuck on assigning the pad button using *57. Our Vista 20 panel responds that *57 is not used, and then I get the EE.

If we can't get both sets of sirens to activate when an alarm sounds, at least we could fire the Simplex sirens first, and then fire the Ademco sirens second using that panic button. Any help or guidance on programming that button would be very much appreciated.

Thanks again for all of your helpful responses,
Michael/AdemcoWisc

I'm also working on a statement of procedures for our alarm center monitoring service.

In the case of a fire alarm, an alarm event code will be sent to the monitoring service. What I'd like to then do is have the monitoring service wait to see if a disarm code is put in (in case there's an accidential trip of the fire system). If the panel is in alarm mode, will it also transmit to the monitoring service a disarm event automatically, or is that something that we could program? Or, is it something that's even possible?

MANY thanks,
Michael

I'm also working on a statement of procedures for our alarm center monitoring service.

In the case of a fire alarm, an alarm event code will be sent to the monitoring service. What I'd like to do is have the monitoring service wait 5 minutes to see if a disarm code is put in. This will give us time to quickly search the building. If we find nothing, or we discover that the system was tripped by accident, we'd like to then put in the disarm code and turn the system off. If the panel is in alarm mode, will it also transmit to the monitoring service a disarm event automatically, or is that something that we could program? Or, is it something that's even possible?

MANY thanks,
Michael

I think the best possible solution for you would be to get a qualified Ademco tech and your fire alarm tech to meet and get this resolved.

Some of the programming questions you are asking go far beyond the "End User" information the board is really set up for.

I don't know what the law is regarding what a monitoring center must do when they receive a fire alarm signal in your state but in Texas they MUST notify the fire department IMMEDIATELY.

If the customer determines it was a false alarm they can call the monitoring center to notify them, which will then notify the fire department that it was a false alarm.
However, in most cases the trucks will continue to "roll" to the location once they have been dispatched. I suppose it has something to do with liability but that's only a guess.

Personally, I wouldn't want to have the trucks wait 5 minutes, those 5 minutes could make the difference between life and death for someone trapped in a burning building.
Even if there was a fine imposed for a false alarm it would be a small price to pay compared to someone dying.

The restore code you are asking about can be programmed in the system (if it isn't already) to report to the monitoring center once a violated zone is reset and/or restored.
It is a good thing to have because the monitoring center will notify the responding department that they did in fact receive a restore signal while the trucks are en-route many times.
It's practically the same thing as the customer calling in a false alarm but it's faster.