FCI 7100

["Richard Merriam" <someonw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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.