Re: FCI 7100

["Crash Gordon" <webmaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In addition to what the others have said...

Your fire panel should be testing BOTH telco lines at least every 24 hours.
If one of them fails it should display a comm fail or trouble - it's
supposed to do that...now if it's sharing the second line with a fax and
it's not correctly wired for line seizure that may be why you are getting a
comm fail.


"Richard Merriam" <someonw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:LTDTe.7452$4i6.2707@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Last October we had a new building built and a FCI 7100 series fire alarm
> system installed by a reputable fire alarm contractor.  Over the course of
> the year we have had to have the contractor back out here many times.  We
> started getting "power errors" , "comm errors" and other errors about
> March
> of this year.  This has happened over 30 times.  They have reinstalled the
> computer program in the panel and even reciently changed the 'bios" chip
> on
> the motherboard.  If we have any power failure for even a short period of
> time (1 second) the system crashes and we have to either have them come
> out
> and reset it or we do it by disconnecting the 120v and battery from the
> system.  Of course the display time and data is defaulted.
>
> The company now says that it is a telephone line problem and that they are
> going to start charging us for service calls.  We have one dedicated phone
> line for fire panel only and another line that is also used with our fax
> line connected to the panel which we were told was ok.
>
> I looked into having a data-logger or recorder tied to our phone lines to
> see if they are loosing tip/ring but apparently there is nothing
> available.
>
> Common sense tells me that if there is a phone line loss (trouble) that it
> should report it to the monitoring station but not put the system into
> trouble and have to do a complete power-down to reset it to clear the
> faults.  The faults that the display gives us sometimes covers everything
> in
> the book.
>
> All wiring and devices and panel were tested by the alarm contractor who
> installed them along with the fire marshall who had to approve it before
> we
> got our certif. of occupancy.  This contractor has been installing systems
> for 20 years.
>
> Would those of you who are familiar with this type of problem give me some
> advice on where to go from here?  I don't know of anything else we can do.
> We certainly can't pay them to come out here on a weekly basis to reset
> their system.
>
>