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Bad Alarm Installation Pictures

Hey All,

20 year alarm professional here. I am helping put together a low
voltage course at an inner-city trade school that will include security
/ fire. I'm looking for pictures of bad installations. Nothing private
labled, I don't want to harpoon any particular installation company.
But we all know that even the best companies can hire bad installers.

Wish I thought of this years ago. The stuff I've seen, and fired techs
for.

Looking for things like resistors in the control, improper color codes
(wrong wires for pos & neg), non-fire wire for smokes, a rate of rise
in the attic, crooked devices, smoke detector in the garage, bad cable
runs, staples in the wires, using a T-18 on Coax, firewire running
diagonally across the dining room ceiling...

You get the idea. I've seen all of those, and many more.

My fav was a service call because of no monitoring station response
from an alarm.
The phoneline was wired to the motion sensor. The phoneline never made
it to the panel. 4 cond wire ran straight from the phone block to the
PIR. Yet the monitoring station had a full set of signals on
installation day.
The tech (using that word lightly) probably sent the sigs from his
house prior to install. I do not wish to speak evil of the dead, but
Emergency Networks was the pioneer of "slap 'em in, and run like hell
with the signed monitoring contract, and sell it to whoever is paying
the most that day". Installers were paid piecework & commission. 4 one
man installs in a day were not uncommon.

Emergency Networks was the same company that pretty much bankrupted the
Alert Center, with the volume of contracts they sold them, with very
high attrition rate. No credit checks back then.

Anyways, if someone could point me in the right direction for some
really great pictures of horrible installs, it would be very much
appreciated. Does not need to be limited to security, could be cable
TV, satellite, anything low voltage.

Thanks for your time,
Bill
 
N

Norm Mugford

Jan 1, 1970
0
All the pictures of Robert BAss's jobs/installs are in Connecticut.
Maybe some one up there in the Hartford area can take pictures
of some of BAss's installs for you. There should be plenty
of shots for you to show in your trade school course.
Nothing better than having a few "What not to do" pictures
as an example.

Norm Mugford




Hey All,

20 year alarm professional here. I am helping put together a low
voltage course at an inner-city trade school that will include security
/ fire. I'm looking for pictures of bad installations. Nothing private
labled, I don't want to harpoon any particular installation company.
But we all know that even the best companies can hire bad installers.

Wish I thought of this years ago. The stuff I've seen, and fired techs
for.

Looking for things like resistors in the control, improper color codes
(wrong wires for pos & neg), non-fire wire for smokes, a rate of rise
in the attic, crooked devices, smoke detector in the garage, bad cable
runs, staples in the wires, using a T-18 on Coax, firewire running
diagonally across the dining room ceiling...

You get the idea. I've seen all of those, and many more.

My fav was a service call because of no monitoring station response
from an alarm.
The phoneline was wired to the motion sensor. The phoneline never made
it to the panel. 4 cond wire ran straight from the phone block to the
PIR. Yet the monitoring station had a full set of signals on
installation day.
The tech (using that word lightly) probably sent the sigs from his
house prior to install. I do not wish to speak evil of the dead, but
Emergency Networks was the pioneer of "slap 'em in, and run like hell
with the signed monitoring contract, and sell it to whoever is paying
the most that day". Installers were paid piecework & commission. 4 one
man installs in a day were not uncommon.

Emergency Networks was the same company that pretty much bankrupted the
Alert Center, with the volume of contracts they sold them, with very
high attrition rate. No credit checks back then.

Anyways, if someone could point me in the right direction for some
really great pictures of horrible installs, it would be very much
appreciated. Does not need to be limited to security, could be cable
TV, satellite, anything low voltage.

Thanks for your time,
Bill


I choose Polesoft Lockspam to fight spam, and you?
http://www.polesoft.com/refer.html
 
N

Nomen Nescio

Jan 1, 1970
0
Bill said:
Looking for things like resistors in the control, improper color codes
(wrong wires for pos & neg), non-fire wire for smokes, a rate of rise
in the attic,

There is nothing automatically wrong about putting a rate of rise head in
an attic. What's wrong is using a 136 degree rate of rise head in an
attic.

But I look forward to seeing your photo gallery. Put it up on the web
someplace.

- badenov
 
N

Nick Markowitz

Jan 1, 1970
0
I have a ton of pictures bad installs and fires caused by 120 voltage and
low voltage defects from various investigations if your intrested.
 
F

FIRETEK

Jan 1, 1970
0
I just happened across one the other day on a monitored fire alarm system.
Picture this: a DSC 5010 control board mounted inside a PC-1000 box with
double sided tape. The keypad is also located inside the same box (you got
it... wedged between the cover and the pc board).

Regards,
Frank
(No, not that "Frank". The other one.)
 
Picture this. Cool/cloudy summer summer morning. Clouds break, temp
goes up 15-20 outside, attic temp can easily jump up 30-40 degrees in
far less time than the threshold of a rate of rise.
Don't know where you're at, but in my neck of the woods, a 140 degree
attic is not uncommon during July / August on a 95-100 degree sunny
day.
I can only recall ever having to pull one out because of this.
 
Picture this. Cool/cloudy summer summer morning. Clouds break, temp
goes up 15-20 outside, attic temp can easily jump up 30-40 degrees in
far less time than the threshold of a rate of rise.
Don't know where you're at, but in my neck of the woods, a 140 degree
attic is not uncommon during July / August on a 95-100 degree sunny
day.
I can only recall ever having to pull one out because of this.

Sorry, haven't been on the "groups" in a few years. This was a reply to
question of "why not put a rate of rise in an attic?"
 
Nick said:

I have a ton of pictures bad installs and fires caused by 120 voltage
and
low voltage defects from various investigations if your intrested.

Yes, very interested! Feel free to forward them to the email address in
my user name: [email protected]
They can spam away there. I only use that address to send out Gmail
invitations to my students.
 
Another one I wish I had taken pictures of...
Was doing a takeover years ago on an install originally put in by a fly
by night company called Homestead Security. I think they started in
Milwaukee, and branched out into the midwest.
A DSC 1550(?) control mounted 6 inches from the front door. Surface
mount contact on the front door, keypad on the control panel door,
motion mounted 1 foot above the control, siren another foot above that,
all wires stapled next to each other like railroad tracks on the wall.
Another wire stapled along the baseboards the length of the house for
the backdoor. Up and around all the door frames as it went.
There was an RJ jack, but he just ran the red & green. No seizure. And
no backup battery in the panel. The cust recalled the installer telling
her it was normal for the trouble light to be on all the time.
 
N

Nomen Nescio

Jan 1, 1970
0
Picture this. Cool/cloudy summer summer morning. Clouds break, temp
goes up 15-20 outside, attic temp can easily jump up 30-40 degrees in
far less time than the threshold of a rate of rise.
Don't know where you're at, but in my neck of the woods, a 140 degree
attic is not uncommon during July / August on a 95-100 degree sunny
day.

Absolutely. That's why you should only use rate of rise heads in attics if
they have a temperature rating of 190-200 degrees. If you use 136 degree
rate of rise heads, you'll definitely wish you hadn't.

As I recall, the threshhold of a rate of rise detector is 15 degrees F per
minute. That is, if the temperature increases at a rate less than that, it
doesn't go into alarm. I don't think attic temperatures ever increase that
rapidly unless there's a fire, at least I've never seen it. I've put lots
of 190 degree rate of rise heads inside attics and even skylights, and they
don't go off.

And if your attic is over 190 degrees, you have a definite problem. :)

Think about the attic problems you've seen, and I'll bet the head was
popped, rather than causing an alarm and restore. If so, that's not a
problem with the rate of rise portion of the head.

Rate of rise heads cover a much larger area than fixed temperature heads,
and they respond much quicker to a fire.

- badenov
 
E

Everywhere Man

Jan 1, 1970
0
That company operates out of Sarasota now and changed it's name to Bass
Home Electronics.
 
F

Frank Olson

Jan 1, 1970
0
Everywhere said:
That company operates out of Sarasota now and changed it's name to Bass
Home Electronics.


I thought his "trademark" was the blank cover plates he left on walls
"for future phone services or speaker jacks". :)
 
R

Robert L Bass

Jan 1, 1970
0
Picture this. Cool/cloudy summer summer morning. Clouds break, temp
goes up 15-20 outside, attic temp can easily jump up 30-40 degrees in
far less time than the threshold of a rate of rise.

Some common Rate-of-Rise hear detectors require a 15ºF rise per minute
before they will respond. I doubt you'll encounter such a rapid rise in a
non-fire situation. However, as you correctly mention, summer attic
temperatures in excess of 135ºF are common even in the northern parts of the
continental US.

--

Regards,
Robert L Bass

=============================>
Bass Home Electronics
4883 Fallcrest Circle
Sarasota · Florida · 34233
941-866-1100 Sales & Tech Support
http://www.bassburglaralarms.com
=============================>
 
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