ECN Forum
Posted By: Sandro Fire Alarm Troubleshoot. - 02/01/04 12:39 PM
I will be heading to a hotel on Monday that has a trouble signal in Zone 1 (entire first floor) of the hotel. There are heat detectors in every room and smoke detectors in the hallway, and 3 pull stations.

The super advised me that all pull stations checked out ok and checked out each room to make sure the system wasn't tampered with.

Is it possible that one of the heat or smoke detectors went faulty?
Posted By: russ m Re: Fire Alarm Troubleshoot. - 02/01/04 12:53 PM
The trouble alarm will sound if there is a break in the circuit. If a connection came loose or a detector was removed or evan a bad, end of the line resistor could cause it.

If a detector went bad you would more than likly have a detector that didn't work or put the whole system into alarm.
Posted By: frank Re: Fire Alarm Troubleshoot. - 02/01/04 02:46 PM
What Russ said but also look for high humidity or wet areas where the heats are.In the hospital where I work the we have the old silver Edwards heat sensors and they rarely fault for no reason and don't always go into "ground fault”. The smokes we have are the new TYCOs they’re infrared,always dust with them. But they are run off computer and it gives the address of the offending device. Russ probably knows better we look for resistive ground faults at the large j boxes and go from there I only know my fire system so take what I say with a grain of salt.Hope by checked out he means he opened them up and checked the terminals....

[This message has been edited by frank (edited 02-01-2004).]
Posted By: elektrikguy Re: Fire Alarm Troubleshoot. - 02/01/04 04:31 PM
Is there an as-built of the system? My guess is that there was a nuisance alarm going off in one room and either the customer(god forbid) or the engineering staff disconnected the detector in the room. If regular maintenance was not done on the detectors in the rooms you will find a TON of dust on and in the detectors which will cause false alarms. Hopefully they kept T-taps to a minimum and you will be able to isolate the problem(hopefully it is only one) very quickly by splitting the circuit by half and half again until problem is found. I worked on an older high rise hotel that had neglected the system and engineering obliterated the system because they were too lazy to install new detectors. They started to "get smart" and tie the communication wires straight through the detector thus having no protection in the room but at least the rooms downstream would still have a signal. Granted a trouble would show up for that detector but by that point who could keep up with the troubles. Took 2 months to do complete retrofit of system including recertification and new detectors in each room. Pain in the butt sometimes when they could not clear a floor and you were required to keep security with you and wait for people to get up and leave for the day. Good luck and be sure to have a good tester with you.
Posted By: Sandro Re: Fire Alarm Troubleshoot. - 02/03/04 01:47 AM
Russ.... turns out it was indeed a loose connection in the smoke detector. Problem solved.

Bye for now.

Sandro.
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