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

well, here is my 2 cents worth. from the sounds of it, you have an onboard relay from the vista going to the simplex for the "fire" zone. this is why both systems sound during a detector going off and not when a pull is going off. my suggestion is to remove the smokes from the vista and hook them up to the simplex. for your type of situation, and since you have 2 different systems, they should not be tied together. having smokes on a a burg panel is fine for residential, but not suited for a commercial fire application. in fact, you will probably see hybrid system become against code in the near future in a commercial setting.
if you need a dialer for the fire alarm, you need to have one specific for fire alarms. these have 2 telco jacks which are to be hooked up to seperate phone lines.
hope this helps a little. another suggestion for you and your alarm company is for you to have them order you the manuals for this system. have them leave them on site so they are there to be used by your alarm company.


good luck

Sam

I agree it's not the best setup in the world Sam and I'm guessing it is grandfathered if the system was in place before the current codes went into effect.
But remember what Michael said in the first post:

The Fire Marshal is happy, and that will get them by until the renovation I guess.
The problem with that is the current marshal may retire or be replaced and the new one will demand all kinds of stuff.

Well ... THAT would certainly be interesting. Thank goodness the fire marshall is young, so unless he leaves for another job somewhere, we'll hopefully keep him around!

I really appreciate all of your help and replies - they've given me some good ammo. for when our security and fire control folks come tomorrow.

Sam - I completely agree with your suggestion to have everything going through the Simplex system. I know the reason it's not that way though. Way back when, when there was smoke in the building, the detectors detected it, and set the horns off on the Simplex system. Problem with that was that it was a day in which there was no school, the building was closed up and locked, and at that time, there was no monitoring involved. The alarms were going off for almost 15 minutes it turned out before someone by accident had to go over to the school, and discovered that the fire horns were on! The reason that the relay panel was installed was to allow the Ademco sirens to sound as well. We have an external siren mounted on the outside of the building, and that will get folks' attention if there's a problem. Thus, the reason why we did that.

I agree - it's not a good solution, but for now, it's working. It's all going to be redone in the not-too-distant future, so then we can have some state-of-the-art stuff put in - well, at least better than what we have now!

I did a walk-around today and counted 5 smokes that were not flashing at 10-second intervals. All the smokes are the same model in the school, and several of them were flashing, so I'm assuming that the ones which were not are totally not functioning at all. In your opinion, do you think that this would be from the water damage that happened up on the second floor? Is it possible that water coming through the ceiling might have shorted out some of the wiring, or is that not plausible? Just wondering if the roofer's insurance can take care of this, or if this would be something that we're responsible. I'm a man of integrity, so I don't want to make the roofing guys pay for more damages than they need to - they've learned an expensive lesson already.

You guys are terrific - hope I can contribute something on this, or another forum here in the future.

I'll post back and let you know what we found out at least - so there'll be some kind of ending!

Take care,
Michael/AdemcoWisc

Yep, I'd say replacing the ones that aren't blinking is a good start.

I'd also like to expand on my previous post so there are no misunderstandings:

I typed: What I mean is the marshal has inspected the system and determined it is sufficient for the time being. I assume he/she knows the renovation is on the horizon and things will be brought up to current codes at that time but the existing system could possibly save lives as it is.

I did not mean to imply that fire alarms are simply to satisfy inspectors.
Although, that is half of the battle.

The way I go about working on fire alarms is: Would I want my family to rely on the system I'm putting in?

Just wanted to update everyone on what happened this past week. The entire ceiling was removed from the second floor of our school, and it revealed some VERY scary wiring for the fire control system. It turned out that there was indeed a short that occurred when the water came pouring through the ceiling. All of the old wiring was pulled out, and we ran brand new wiring that is now up to code. Six brand new smoke detectors are on the way for the second floor. Once they arrive, we will go through and test every single detector to be sure it's functioning properly.

I'm happy to report that the fire trouble code has cleared, and the system is now operating normally.

One strange thing though - We have an Ademco 6139 alpha keypad that is "silent". It makes no noise when one presses the buttons, and audible beeps are not heard through the speaker, either. Can this be controlled somehow through some sort of setting in the keypad, or could it be that the pad's sounder has failed? Just wondering if anyone else has experienced this problem before.

We should be cooking with gas by mid-week next week - thank goodness! Thanks again for all the help and replies.