Hi everyone:

Am a new subscriber to the forum - I've been reading posts for awhile, and there are lots of knowledgeable folks on this board ... glad to be a part of it.

I'm hoping I could ask a few questions about our Vista 20 alarm/fire control system from Ademco.

We have these Vista 20 systems installed on our campus (a church, a school, a house and an office). The building I have questions about is the school.

Let me start off by saying that I know for sure what we have is not 100% up to code. We are inspected every year by the fire marshal, and he's happy with what we have, so I guess I'm happy, too. We have a renovation coming down the pike in the next 5-7 years, so I'm sure this will all be replaced with new equipment when the time comes. We're going to try to keep this "limping along" for the meantime.

We were having a new roof put on the school, and the roofing company wasn't careful in covering the roof while they were working on it, and yep ... you guessed it ... water all over the second floor of our school.

Water came pouring through a large section of ceiling, passing completely through two of our smoke detectors that were mounted on the ceiling. Now, the control pads are all showing FIRE TROUBLE 01. Will replacing these units work, or is there a fault in the wiring, and we'll have to do all new wiring for them as well?

The second question I have is about conducting fire drills in the school. We have a Simplex 2001 fire control panel, with pull boxes throughout the school. The Simplex box is somehow hooked into the Ademco box. We discovered not too long ago that when a detector detects smoke and sounds the alarm, both the Ademco sirens and the Simplex sirens sound at the same time. We have been conducting fire drills for the last several years using only the Simplex system, but we now want to conduct drills EXACTLY as they would happen in a real emergency and sound box sets of sirens.

The suggestion was made to silence the Ademco sirens and only sound the Simplex sirens, but the problem with that setup is that there is an Ademco siren mounted on the outside of the building, and it serves as the only audible alert to people in the other building that something is wrong in the school. So ... we really don't want to turn them off.

We also discovered that when a pull station is activated, only the Simplex sirens sound.

My questions:

1. Is there a way to program the Ademco system that when a pull box is activated via the Simplex system, that both sets of sirens would sound?

2. If that's not possible, is there a way to program a button on the control pad to sound the fire sirens (like a fire panic), and then we would also manually sound the Simplex sirens, as done before?

I hope that this isn't too too confusing, and that I explained it well enough. If you need clarification or any other info. that I can provide, feel free to let me know.

I know this is LLLLLLLLLLONG! Thanks much for reading, and for your thoughts and suggestions.

Take care,
Michael/AdemcoWisc

Hello and welcome to the board Michael.

Before we get started I would recommend that you get a licensed alarm company to help you with this situation.

The answer to your first question:
Yes, replacing the detectors should take care of the trouble condition.

Yes IF there is at least one unused zone in the Ademco panel. This is the part the Alarm company will need to do.

Thanks, Bobby, for your post - appreciate it. Yep - we have the alarm company coming out on Wednesday to take a look at it ... I just thought I could get a heads up as to what we might be in for when Wednesday rolls around.

I read another post on here (I think you might have posted the reply, actually) about creating a fire panic button using Zone 95. Is that something that we could utilize as well and activate the sirens from the control pad?

The vendor we use is wonderful, but Honeywell/Ademco systems are not their specialty, and they sometimes have to leave to look stuff up. I'm trying to get as much info. together as possible so that they can hopefully fix everything with one service call ... wishful thinking on my part!

Thanks again,
Michael/AdemcoWisc

Yep, you can have a manual fire button programmed in the Ademco system (activated from the keypad) but it may not activate the Simplex system strobes and horns when it is pressed.

Michael you can program one of your panic buttons as ZONE 95, this will indeed activate the sirens.

Thanks for your continued replies. Really appreciate all of the help. Bobby - you had mentioned that it would be possible to activate both sets of sirens (Simplex and Ademco) if there was an extra zone open on the Ademco panel. I checked the panel, and it looks like we have at least one, possibly, two zones open. Would you be able to go into some detail as to how this might be done so that I could share this with the vendor when they come on Wednesday?

Is Zone 95 a specific zone that corresponds to one of the four panic buttons on the Ademco keypad? I get the part about programming Zone 95 as a fire zone using *56, but I'm stuck on assigning the pad button using *57. Our Vista 20 panel responds that *57 is not used, and then I get the EE.

If we can't get both sets of sirens to activate when an alarm sounds, at least we could fire the Simplex sirens first, and then fire the Ademco sirens second using that panic button. Any help or guidance on programming that button would be very much appreciated.

Thanks again for all of your helpful responses,
Michael/AdemcoWisc

I'm also working on a statement of procedures for our alarm center monitoring service.

In the case of a fire alarm, an alarm event code will be sent to the monitoring service. What I'd like to then do is have the monitoring service wait to see if a disarm code is put in (in case there's an accidential trip of the fire system). If the panel is in alarm mode, will it also transmit to the monitoring service a disarm event automatically, or is that something that we could program? Or, is it something that's even possible?

MANY thanks,
Michael

I'm also working on a statement of procedures for our alarm center monitoring service.

In the case of a fire alarm, an alarm event code will be sent to the monitoring service. What I'd like to do is have the monitoring service wait 5 minutes to see if a disarm code is put in. This will give us time to quickly search the building. If we find nothing, or we discover that the system was tripped by accident, we'd like to then put in the disarm code and turn the system off. If the panel is in alarm mode, will it also transmit to the monitoring service a disarm event automatically, or is that something that we could program? Or, is it something that's even possible?

MANY thanks,
Michael

I think the best possible solution for you would be to get a qualified Ademco tech and your fire alarm tech to meet and get this resolved.

Some of the programming questions you are asking go far beyond the "End User" information the board is really set up for.

I don't know what the law is regarding what a monitoring center must do when they receive a fire alarm signal in your state but in Texas they MUST notify the fire department IMMEDIATELY.

If the customer determines it was a false alarm they can call the monitoring center to notify them, which will then notify the fire department that it was a false alarm.
However, in most cases the trucks will continue to "roll" to the location once they have been dispatched. I suppose it has something to do with liability but that's only a guess.

Personally, I wouldn't want to have the trucks wait 5 minutes, those 5 minutes could make the difference between life and death for someone trapped in a burning building.
Even if there was a fine imposed for a false alarm it would be a small price to pay compared to someone dying.

The restore code you are asking about can be programmed in the system (if it isn't already) to report to the monitoring center once a violated zone is reset and/or restored.
It is a good thing to have because the monitoring center will notify the responding department that they did in fact receive a restore signal while the trucks are en-route many times.
It's practically the same thing as the customer calling in a false alarm but it's faster.

well, here is my 2 cents worth. from the sounds of it, you have an onboard relay from the vista going to the simplex for the "fire" zone. this is why both systems sound during a detector going off and not when a pull is going off. my suggestion is to remove the smokes from the vista and hook them up to the simplex. for your type of situation, and since you have 2 different systems, they should not be tied together. having smokes on a a burg panel is fine for residential, but not suited for a commercial fire application. in fact, you will probably see hybrid system become against code in the near future in a commercial setting.
if you need a dialer for the fire alarm, you need to have one specific for fire alarms. these have 2 telco jacks which are to be hooked up to seperate phone lines.
hope this helps a little. another suggestion for you and your alarm company is for you to have them order you the manuals for this system. have them leave them on site so they are there to be used by your alarm company.


good luck

Sam

I agree it's not the best setup in the world Sam and I'm guessing it is grandfathered if the system was in place before the current codes went into effect.
But remember what Michael said in the first post:

The Fire Marshal is happy, and that will get them by until the renovation I guess.
The problem with that is the current marshal may retire or be replaced and the new one will demand all kinds of stuff.

Well ... THAT would certainly be interesting. Thank goodness the fire marshall is young, so unless he leaves for another job somewhere, we'll hopefully keep him around!

I really appreciate all of your help and replies - they've given me some good ammo. for when our security and fire control folks come tomorrow.

Sam - I completely agree with your suggestion to have everything going through the Simplex system. I know the reason it's not that way though. Way back when, when there was smoke in the building, the detectors detected it, and set the horns off on the Simplex system. Problem with that was that it was a day in which there was no school, the building was closed up and locked, and at that time, there was no monitoring involved. The alarms were going off for almost 15 minutes it turned out before someone by accident had to go over to the school, and discovered that the fire horns were on! The reason that the relay panel was installed was to allow the Ademco sirens to sound as well. We have an external siren mounted on the outside of the building, and that will get folks' attention if there's a problem. Thus, the reason why we did that.

I agree - it's not a good solution, but for now, it's working. It's all going to be redone in the not-too-distant future, so then we can have some state-of-the-art stuff put in - well, at least better than what we have now!

I did a walk-around today and counted 5 smokes that were not flashing at 10-second intervals. All the smokes are the same model in the school, and several of them were flashing, so I'm assuming that the ones which were not are totally not functioning at all. In your opinion, do you think that this would be from the water damage that happened up on the second floor? Is it possible that water coming through the ceiling might have shorted out some of the wiring, or is that not plausible? Just wondering if the roofer's insurance can take care of this, or if this would be something that we're responsible. I'm a man of integrity, so I don't want to make the roofing guys pay for more damages than they need to - they've learned an expensive lesson already.

You guys are terrific - hope I can contribute something on this, or another forum here in the future.

I'll post back and let you know what we found out at least - so there'll be some kind of ending!

Take care,
Michael/AdemcoWisc

Yep, I'd say replacing the ones that aren't blinking is a good start.

I'd also like to expand on my previous post so there are no misunderstandings:

I typed: What I mean is the marshal has inspected the system and determined it is sufficient for the time being. I assume he/she knows the renovation is on the horizon and things will be brought up to current codes at that time but the existing system could possibly save lives as it is.

I did not mean to imply that fire alarms are simply to satisfy inspectors.
Although, that is half of the battle.

The way I go about working on fire alarms is: Would I want my family to rely on the system I'm putting in?

Just wanted to update everyone on what happened this past week. The entire ceiling was removed from the second floor of our school, and it revealed some VERY scary wiring for the fire control system. It turned out that there was indeed a short that occurred when the water came pouring through the ceiling. All of the old wiring was pulled out, and we ran brand new wiring that is now up to code. Six brand new smoke detectors are on the way for the second floor. Once they arrive, we will go through and test every single detector to be sure it's functioning properly.

I'm happy to report that the fire trouble code has cleared, and the system is now operating normally.

One strange thing though - We have an Ademco 6139 alpha keypad that is "silent". It makes no noise when one presses the buttons, and audible beeps are not heard through the speaker, either. Can this be controlled somehow through some sort of setting in the keypad, or could it be that the pad's sounder has failed? Just wondering if anyone else has experienced this problem before.

We should be cooking with gas by mid-week next week - thank goodness! Thanks again for all the help and replies.