burglar alarm

[alarm man]

ACT battery testers are the canines gonads...wish mine hadnt been swiped...

battery killers imo..

 

[sparky3366]

whereabouts are you in the UK?

 

[sparky3366]

If they kill a battery, it was on its way out IMHO...

 

[alarm man]

whereabouts are you in the UK?

oop north

 

[oldtimer]

youve got an act battery tester then..batterys not being changed is a non maintained issue,weve all heard systems act when the power goes off in the street.hence the need for maintained systems

Yep I have an act battery tester although I hate to disagree with you again but the customer I mentioned previously reported that her maintenance consisted of a "guy" being in her property for 15 minutes setting the alarm off no cover taken off then being asked to sign a sheet. She said you have been in the house for 1.5 hours replaced a 10 year old battery handed me service sheets that any alarm company can use for reference and charged me £75 bucks.
Alarm man you are correct a maintained alarm does not cause any problems but lets face when alarm companies work in hundreds of systems they can cut costs by ommiting the battery from the maintenanace contract and then hit the customer with a bill for replacing it when they get called out the whole idea is to replace the battery before it does cause a problem
PS I have a 25 year old ADE Optima 2+ gets its battery changed every 5 years and has not missed a beat and as for Omnicrom panels I got a few jobs years ago replacing hose heaps of a well you know

 

[sparky3366]

Ive just taken out a gardtec 300 series (yuk!) and put in a Galaxy G2-20 at home...far better panel and besides there was a fault on the data side on the panel. The battery in the panel was deformed and corrosion on the terminals, powersonic 2.1 A/h and 4 years old...Yuasa every time for me.

 

[oldtimer]

Ive just taken out a gardtec 300 series (yuk!) and put in a Galaxy G2-20 at home...far better panel and besides there was a fault on the data side on the panel. The battery in the panel was deformed and corrosion on the terminals, powersonic 2.1 A/h and 4 years old...Yuasa every time for me.

Yep would agree and I would point out always put the installtion date on the battery and one more thing to point out if the panel is located in an area with higher than normal temperatures then you find it will only last 3 years.
One other point I saw the back of an Alarm Engineers van and there was no seperation of old or new batteries plus he had no idea he thought he could use batteries stripped out of an old job so yep I have been called out to a 2 year old job and the battery is in a right state

 

[sparky3366]

I put a test label on them with the install date and space for voltage and A/h on them...

 

[alarm man]

Yep I have an act battery tester although I hate to disagree with you again but the customer I mentioned previously reported that her maintenance consisted of a "guy" being in her property for 15 minutes setting the alarm off no cover taken off then being asked to sign a sheet. She said you have been in the house for 1.5 hours replaced a 10 year old battery handed me service sheets that any alarm company can use for reference and charged me £75 bucks.
Alarm man you are correct a maintained alarm does not cause any problems but lets face when alarm companies work in hundreds of systems they can cut costs by ommiting the battery from the maintenanace contract and then hit the customer with a bill for replacing it when they get called out the whole idea is to replace the battery before it does cause a problem
PS I have a 25 year old ADE Optima 2+ gets its battery changed every 5 years and has not missed a beat and as for Omnicrom panels I got a few jobs years ago replacing hose heaps of a well you know

it takes more than 15 mins to drink the tea,we change batts every 4 years,modern panels cut down on ri time,but looking at 45 mins for large domestic with galaxy,1 hour + for mansion type house

 

[sparkyb]

I have just started doing alarms, Could any of you advise me of what tests I should be doing when doing a check up on the alarm?

Many thanks.

 

[oldtimer]

There you go

View attachment TESTBLANK.pdf

View attachment serviblank.pdf

 

[sparkyb]

Thanks for that oldtimer but how do you actually do the tests and what results should i be getting? What tester do I need. I know they are silly questions and I apologise.

 

[oldtimer]

Well you need a decent multimeter and you need to follow the checks on the alarm test sheet ie ohms for circuits or zones and tamper circuits as well milliamp and voltage for any unit with power ie vibration or pir detectors once you get these then you have a reference if you need to get called back.

Also I know its obvious but mind zero or deduct your leads resistance when measuring

 

[sparkyb]

Thanks Old timer but I think we need to take it back a bit lol.
Do we test between the 2 wires used for the zones and find the resistance, if so what reading should we be getting?
what you mean by testing resistance, I have not done much testing.

Thanks for your time in advance.

 

[Knownotall]

Dont forget to take the reading of each tamper circuit before you join them all together for the global tamper connections. Mind you does anyone fit the tamper circuit anymore or has 6 core cable become obsolete!!

Knownotall