New Elk user, confirming my approach

[GQuack]

Greetings, I am new to this forum and about to implement an Elk M1 gold in a new house. Since Elk doesn't provide direct customer support and where I am moving has no "local" professionals, I expect to be mostly on my own.

First up is to get smoke detectors working in order to pass inspection and get a certificate of occupancy. I have a keypad connected, system is powered up, using 4 wire smoke detectors connected to the panel. Now for the programming.

I believe this is what I need to do but would appreciate confirmation from the experts here.

5 smoke detectors, define zones 1-5.
For each smoke detector, Def=10, type=5

Ok so far?

What I am missing is how to "silence" a smoke detector once it has been triggered. I've read about the connections to the SAUX terminals used to drop power and silence the alarm(s).

How do I trigger the ELK to drop power to a specific or to all smoke detectors?

What else do I need to be aware of?

Regards and thank you.

 

[mikefamig]

Entering your user code will silence the smoke alarm the same as it will any zone violation. At least it does on my wireless smokes.
 
Mike.

 

[mikefamig]

And yes def=10 type=5

 

[ano]

Smoke alarms typically latch on when tripped, so in addition to telling the panel to stop alarming, the panel also needs to cycle the power on the smoke alarm to reset it.  This brings up another aspect, the EOL relay. This relay monitors the power going to smoke alarms which is important because smoke alarms are NO devices, and with no power, they won't alarm. You are using 5 zones for 5 smoke alarms, but typically you put several on the same zone so you don't need a EOL relay for each.  You can tell which smoke alarm tripped because typically they have a LED which will light until they are reset. There is nothing wrong with 5 zones, but they really aren't needed.

 

[RAL]

5 smoke detectors, define zones 1-5.

Ok so far?
 

 
By connecting the smoke detectors to separate zones, you will run into reset problems.
 
You'll be much better off if you wire the smokes in a daisy chain (rather than home runs to each) and connect them all to one zone. As @ano mentioned, the smokes latch their alarm condition, so you will still be able to tell which one triggered.

 

[GQuack]

These are all great replies, thank you. Is there a simple way to accomplish a daisy chain with existing home run wiring? What is easy to do is put all 5 alarms in zone 1 since they are in fairly close proximity (25 yards).

 

[RAL]

If you ran 4-wire home run cables, you can't make a daisy chain for 4-wire smokes.  You'd need a second 4-wire cable to each smoke to build a daisy chain. 
 
But you can use a single 4-wire cable to form a daisy chain if you use 2-wire smokes.
 
2-wire smokes are easier to install since they don't need a power supervision relay the way 4-wire smokes do.
 
On the Elk, you'll need to connect 2-wire smokes to zone 16.

 

[Del91574]

Actually, to meet code, he's going to need a reversing relay and some considerations. The detector make/model is going to be important, as is if there is going to need to be another module added.