We are located in East Hampton, CT. (Just drop a couple zeros from the
East Hampton, NY property values.)
Although the original system was installed years ago, only the fire
alarm and sensors were connected. The installer never returned to
finish the job, so all of the hard wired sensors in doors and windows
were not connected to the central box when the power surge came
through. The Napco box and boards looked pretty good....just
completely dead.
The new installer tested and connected all of the sensors; only one
window sensor was not functioning.
Ieeeeeee donoooo about that. I'd have to say that if it were me,
coming
into a job that I didn't install, and finding out that it had a light
ning hit, I'd have put a lot of pressure on you to change out all the
switches and components in the system. If I was going to be your alarm
company, I certainly wouldn't want to "buy" into a system that could
possibly give me troubleshooting headaches that could arise from, not
changing out possibly damaged components. I'd sooner walk away from
a job than take on the responsibility of having to coming back over
the
next few years changing components one by one. Or at least, if you
didn't want to change them up front, I'd ask you to sign a waiver.
When light ning hit's alarm switches, it can pit the contacts so that
they will either stick and not open, stick and not open intermittantly
or not make good contact and cause the type of problem that you're
having. Some installers think after a hit, and contacts stick, if they
just
give them a couple of taps to "loosen them up" that they've cured any
problems. Not so! If they were stuck they're bad. Also, just because
a contact doesn't give an indication that it was hit, doesn't mean
that you don't have to change the contact anyway. There's no sure way
to really tell if it's good bad or going to be intermittant.
And, if there was one "bad" contact and the wires weren't attached
to panel, how'd THAT happen? I'd have changed them all.
Regardless, you'll still have to do some process of elimination to
find what is causing your immediate problem. At this point, I'm
guessing an intermittant contact.
My concern was that if I arm the system while I sleep to discover the
bad zone and it falses, the alarm will sound. Is there a way around
that?- Hide quoted text -
All you'd have to do is remove one of the wires going to the siren,
or siren module that is likely located in the main box. Or, just arm
it while you're out of the house. The zone that tripped will be
indicated at the keypad, when you return. Notify central to take you
off line while you're testing. If you have outside sirens, and close
neighbors, you may want to pull the siren wire anyway.
