Trouble With Alarm 12 July 2022 at 8:47AM in Techie Stuff 1 reply 62 views

kah22

My house has two Zones 1 and 2. Zone 2 controls an add on kitchen and has its own fuse box. Zone 1 controls everything else including my alarm.  The alarm must be 15 years or more and to be honest hasn't really been used in years!

Some days back an electric fault developed in my kitchen, it kept shorting,  which took some time to resolve and that entailed a turning on and off of the fuse box, trying various fuses etc. Since then the alarm keeps going off on its own. I'm guessing that somehow this is related to the switching on and off of the Zone 2 fuse box.

The fault keeps showing 'On-Chg.Volts Lo' It also shows 'Enter Code. Check' and I'm guessing it's the battery for it was never replaced!  I know, I know!

Now I'm having difficulty finding the company that installed the system but I do know they still exist.

Is there a way to return the alarm back from battery power to mains power until I can contact the installer? The keypad shows PA1, PA2, QUICK and RESET.  The date shows 01 Jan 09 05 08.

Attached a few photos in the hope that helps.

As always thanks for any advice offered

Undervalued

Most larger towns have one or more independent alarm maintenance companies who will work on most types of alarm systems. Sometimes they are connected to locksmith firms.

Normally an alarm will have its own fuse / circuit breaker in the consumer unit. Has that bee turned off and forgotten? They are then normally wired into a fused but unswitched spur. Has that fuse blown?

With mains power restored the alarm should work happily even with a dead battery (unless there is a power cut of course). It may display an error message.

Do you know the engineer code (not user code) for the system? If not most maintenance companies will generally know the likely defaults. If not there will be a way of fully resetting the panel and setting it up again.

The outside sounders will have their own backup batteries which will make them sound if they are getting no signal from the panel. They should stop after about 20 mins.

If you have not used the system for 15 years, do you need it? If you do it needs some money spending to sort. If not it needs disconnecting which will get noisy if you don't know what you are doing!