intermittent fire alarm fault

[LlandrilloSpark]

Fellas

Called out to a fault on Friday, zone fault which occurs every half hour or so, I think it might be head contamination , is there any way to test for this?, there are 5 sounders and a call per zone, this morning I've swapped all the heads from zone 3 where the fault is to zone 2 and vice versa so in sat here doing nothing waiting for the fault to hopefully appear on zone 2!

 

[telectrix]

is it going into fire or fault?

 

[LlandrilloSpark]

Fault m8

 

[telectrix]

check the connections of the eol device. the wire on these is very thin and it's easy to get a poor connection. if it's a simple resistor, you can verify with ohm meterat the zone pair in the panel ( dis. from panel first) , usually they are a couple of kohms.

 

[LlandrilloSpark]

Cheers Tel, the hotelier bought a new sounder before I arrived as he thought the one that flashed every 5sec was faulty because the others flash at 20sec, but I told him that it flashes at 5 to indicate that it is the EOL, I changed it anyway , I'll crack out the MFT and compare resistances across all the zones, cheers again

 

[telectrix]

problem is when the eol is not a pure resistor. all you can do is short out the pair at the eol and measure the resistance + plus -.

 

[Englishsparks]

By the sounds of it, its a Twin Wire system? Rafiki?

1. Swap the zones over to make sure its not the panel

2. Swap end of line devices

3. Move end of line device to half way point ( will atleast tell you wich half your looking in)

4. Repeat step 4 and so on


Sorry but no easy way of resolving this for you, just patients. Find a good Cafe that doese bacon sarnies as you may be there sometime.

 

[LlandrilloSpark]

Lol ^ exact as ive done pretty much, fault not appeared now for 3 hours, so I'm on to the next job, swapped the wires in the panel and prooved fault was in the field wiring, then swaped all heads in zone 3 to 2 and vice versa, swapped EOL's and measured resistance on two zones, nothing , prob get a call at 9pm like I did on Friday!

 

[tazz]

On a convential system, contaminated sensors will not show a fault, they either activate or dont work at all.
If it is a twin wire Rafiki, then there are no end of line units. as each detector has an end of line switch.
Suggest follow Englishsparks points, using swith number 1 to make the detector end of line.
Rafiki are a troublesome panel and 99% of the faults are the push in pins on the detectors check these and clean them.

 

[LlandrilloSpark]

Yes it's rafiki twin wire, real easy system, confusing panel, hate it

 

[tazz]

Yes it's rafiki twin wire, real easy system, confusing panel, hate it

Strip it out and fit a kentec...lol

 

[LlandrilloSpark]

Noticed that on the top floor zone, the sparks who fitted it drilled a 20mm Hole for the FP200 to loop in & out, on every device the pins were covered in dust and crumbled tearing from the roof slates which had got down the holes, I have cleaned the holes and pumped full of clear sealant, I doubt that helped them

 

[tazz]

I put my money on it that it the crap pins on one or more of the detectors. Rafiki is made for the general electrical trade as a quick fit, but there expensive to install and to maintain, if its not a massive fire system. I would serious offer the customer a trouble free upgrade just changing the panel and detection. You would not have to rewire it.

 

[Englishsparks]

Get yourself a can of air.

and clean each chamber out

 

[LlandrilloSpark]

fault returned :mad2: swapped all chambers from affected zone 3 to zone 2 and vice versa, cleaned out all chambers of both zones, proved fault was in field wiring & not the panel , had 5 days no fault then fault appears on zone 3 again......