On June 4, 2006 at 08:38, wireman_095 said...
We've run into this in a few cities around here.
Some cities let us hardwire the transformer,
the others just would not let us do the low voltage
smokes no matter what!! One inspector told me
his reason for this. is that people may not always
have the money to maintain the alarm system and
then the smokes wouldn't be there when they were
needed. The 110 volt are pretty much install
and forget.
I don't agree but sometimes you can't fight City
Hall.
I have heard variations of that comment about not maintaining them. When ever we do primary LV smokes, we also install an outside horn/strobe. I have a few customers who do not want monthly monitoring, so we set it up and run it as a local system. We just instruct the customer to contact us when the batteries need to be replaced. When it is explained to them that these smokes are installed for their safety, they contact us for battery replacement. Seems to be working for us. We replace about a dozen batteries or so a year for our non-monitored customers. We use 2 batteries on these types of jobs, 1 for the panel and 1 for the power supply that we use just for powering the smokes.
What I want to know is how many of you out there wire the smokes with 18/4 versus 22/4? We always use 18/4, but I see a number of jobs wired with 22/4 and I think those jobs are just problems waiting to happen.