Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Residental Smoke Detector Issues


Are Alarm technicians putting home owners at risk?
When they buy Smoke detectors with sounders but not the
Reversing relay which makes them all sound at once?

I was in my local alarm supply house the other day when I purchased 3 System Sensor I3-A smoke detectors with built in sounders and the special reversing relay Model# RRS-MOD which makes them all sound at once if any one detector activates this just makes sense you want to wake up the whole house. But when I picked up the relay and put it on the counter the salesman stated good job you picked up the correct part. What are you talking about I asked?
You’re the only one who buys those types of smoke detectors and hooks them up with the reversing relay he stated. The other salesman at the counter agreed.
Ok so what are the other company’s doing to make sure all the smokes sound at once and wake or alert home owners to problems?
Well the answer is there either not using the relay and have the smokes hooked up so only one sounds that’s in alarm or more dangerously there using a cheap burglar alarm relay to do what the RSS-MOD does either way this is not a good situation and could be down right deadly.
Once again this issue comes down to alarm installer training and alarm company ignorance and this is not the only issue I run into with residential alarm systems and how there fire alarm part of the system is hooked up. Some panels use a 4 wire smoke detector
Which when a 4 wire detector is used the last one in the loop is supposed to have a power supervision relay hooked in to make sure power is applied to the smokes again I never ever find them when working on residential systems the sounding device is suppose to have a resistor across it also in many panels to supervise the sounder to make sure it is always working and again I never find the horns supervised alarm installers and company’s just do what the feel like and then when you see in the papers the various law suit home owners and there insurers have filed against alarm company’s is it any wonder?
So how do you the home owner know your system is installed properly? well the answer is you do not its Russian roulette when it comes to alarm systems being installed properly and this same issue goes on with in professionally installed systems as well as I see plenty of them hooked up wrong as well.
All the training and license in the world will not mean anything unless there is meaningful enforcement and in my state and many others it is non existent.

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