Home Run 4-Wire Smokes & Elk M1 Gold

[apostolakisl]

1) CS calls your installations back on a pots line, the same pots line that the panel uses to call out?  This must be one of your many $20M installations.  To paraphrase a nearly former president, 1980 called and wants their alarm panel CS back.
2) CS does call my cell phone, if no response, they call wife, if no response they dispatch.  Seems like a really good way to do residential, probably the way most people do it.  It works real well.  Dispatch occurs within 2 minutes of alarm or less.  My CS calls me within 30 seconds.  If I don't answer, it adds another 30 seconds to call my wife.
3) If no one is there to manually reset, then I guess you have persisting alarm/trouble codes until someone shows up.  Doesn't sound like a big issue to me, since after all, you did have a fire alarm go off and either 1-you have a fire, or 2-you have a malfunction.  Either way, someone needs to show up.
4) Manual reset kills power to smokes, smokes shut off, power restores, smokes turn back on to normal mode (assuming normal conditions now exist) and trouble condition resolves.  
5) arm/disarm panel and trouble warning clears
6) $20 million houses?

 

[Del91574]

Lou,
 
Since you're industry, you must know about ECV and it's implementation.
 
1. POTS is the most common communications route for existing alarm panels, upwards of 6 million accounts still use that route. The addition of other methods of primary communications routes have started becoming more prevalent as the market segment moves into cell-only or VOIP and the inherent risks and liabilities of using VOIP as a communications route for DTMF data, or with some manufacturers, modem based data transmission (DMP or Modem IV would come to mind) and communications routes having more and more digitization inserted in the path between A and B, of which I'm sure you're aware of.
 
2. How your CS acts is not necessarily the industry standard and whether or not ECV is being implemented by the CS or mandated by your particular locale. If they implement ECV, the extent that ECV is implemented varies significantly from vendor to vendor and there is no mandate or standardization or minimum performance based standards.
 
3. That's going to work well in all instances according to your mentality. Of course, shouldn't be an issue as long as a keyholder is always available and the zone can be shunted remotely....oh that's right, fire alarm is non-bypassable. So I guess while someone is on vacation or away, that might be a slight issue. Nothing bad will happen in the amount of time it takes for someone to respond to the property, per your belief.
 
4. And your method is going to generate a nuisance trouble condition on every connected system zone. Same when the tandem ring occurs. Design flaw. Guess that's tolerable to you.
 
5. And that works for every panel out there? Just your install? Walk me through a factual operation of a system with the design criteria.
 
6. MTMA architects, Governor Smith Homestead and property. House structure alone was valued at $10 mil at time of loss ('99). Rebuild and interior fit out/sitework was just shy of $20 mil from the insurer. Cote De Texas Roehm might be a good search term for you to learn more. Plenty published on the house and related property/structures (15 in total for the compound). I'll spare you the systems and site installation details, however there are 15 monitoring accounts on the property, triple path routing, so in actuality, 45 accounts to the CS.
 
And FYI, the loss was attributed to a lamp cord or outlet arcing and shorting, which caused the alarm system to send valid FA signals to the CS, however the original installation company was found to have improperly templated the account report codes with the CS and subsequently the automation deemed the signal to be a fire trouble signal based on the report code. Of course, there were shortfalls in the install besides that, but that's another forensic discussion.
 
The CS protocol was to simply call the property upon receipt of a fire trouble and notify the subscriber and call list. Protocol did not dictate for the FD to be dispatched to the property, period, no matter how many signals were received by them. The verbal notification to the call recipients was that a trouble signal was being received and subsequently based on that information, the keyholders were acting based upon the information the CS provided them, which was a fire alarm trouble condition and not an actual fire alarm.
 
Summary judgement for the CS and original installation company was released after the limited liability clause was paid by them. Think it was around $250 they had pay and they walked clean from their mistakes. Not bad for malpractice and negligence.