My house came with an alarm system (a DSC PC1616), but none of the smoke detectors were wired to the alarm panel. The house has something like 7 smoke detectors (one in each bedroom, one on each end of the upstairs hall by the bedrooms, and one on each of the other floors). The builder said that they were all wired together such that if one goes off then they will all go off, but he didn't seem to know how they were actually tied together.
Unfortunately, nothing was pre-wierd for the alarm system, so if I can't re-use whatever they used to connect the existing smokes together then I'll either need to go wireless or run the wire myself. The vast majority of the smoke detectors are installed on the third floor and the alarm panel is also on the third floor, so I think think it'll be too much trouble to run those wires in the attic. The first and second floor ones, however, will be much more difficult.
So, here are my questions - should I really replace all 7 smoke detectors with monitored ones? I keep going back and forth on this one... if the house does catch on fire, then it seems like all of the detectors will be sensing smoke pretty quickly and if I only put in a few monitored ones - maybe one on each floor - I should be able to detect anything. On the other hand, there must be a reason that they put in 7 detectors, and obviously it would be best to catch a fire as soon as possible, so maybe they should all be monitoried.
Does anyone know how the existing smoke detectors are wired together? Would I be able to reuse that cable at all?
Finally, does each wired smoke detector require it's own zone? My panel suppots a maximum of 16 zones and I was really hoping to put each door and window on it's own seperate zone... so that alone will use something like 12 or 13 zones. If I need a seperate zone for each smoke detector, then I'm probably going to need to upgrade the panel as well.
Thanks much,
Brett
Unfortunately, nothing was pre-wierd for the alarm system, so if I can't re-use whatever they used to connect the existing smokes together then I'll either need to go wireless or run the wire myself. The vast majority of the smoke detectors are installed on the third floor and the alarm panel is also on the third floor, so I think think it'll be too much trouble to run those wires in the attic. The first and second floor ones, however, will be much more difficult.
So, here are my questions - should I really replace all 7 smoke detectors with monitored ones? I keep going back and forth on this one... if the house does catch on fire, then it seems like all of the detectors will be sensing smoke pretty quickly and if I only put in a few monitored ones - maybe one on each floor - I should be able to detect anything. On the other hand, there must be a reason that they put in 7 detectors, and obviously it would be best to catch a fire as soon as possible, so maybe they should all be monitoried.
Does anyone know how the existing smoke detectors are wired together? Would I be able to reuse that cable at all?
Finally, does each wired smoke detector require it's own zone? My panel suppots a maximum of 16 zones and I was really hoping to put each door and window on it's own seperate zone... so that alone will use something like 12 or 13 zones. If I need a seperate zone for each smoke detector, then I'm probably going to need to upgrade the panel as well.
Thanks much,
Brett
