#1: Best of luck trying to figure out how to do that, especially if you’ve never done so before.
#2: “Tri-element” means a smoke detector with three different sensors, such as the photoelectric, ionization, & thermal sensors Edwards’ Signature series has, thus being an improvement on single-element detectors (& while I believe the current Signature Optica line doesn’t have an ionization sensor, it does have an advanced photoelectric sensor incorporating two LEDs, one red, one blue, for better distinction between say steam & smoke from an actual fire, which no other company has tried as far as I know. They can also have integrated heat & CO sensors for additional functionality).
I’m not sure if Edwards always does their own installs, but I’m sure at least some of the time that can be blamed on the techs at a 3rd-party service company, thus in those cases it’s not Edwards’ fault (most Edwards systems that I’ve seen seem to be pretty good install-wise though).
Did you look it up??
Well, you could put a simplex smoke and heat detector on a co sensor base, and system sensor makes a 4 element detector with smoke, heat, co, and ir flame detector
Edwards does have 3rd party vendors, but I think they also do first party installs.
Simplex/JCI is almost exclusively first party for install.
What about notifier,fire-lite, fci-gamewell and SK
Those are all through 3rd party distributors. Honeywell doesn’t do their own installs or maintenance direct to customers.
emphasis on the almost. my school’s system was almost certainly third party. and a sketchy third party, too.
All of those devices are your opinion in terms of them beating Edwards’ devices, & they’re good no doubt, but just the same Caleb has a point: most of the ones he listed are pretty good Edwards products. As for the “6520B”, I’m assuming he meant to type “6250B” as there is a detector by that model number but got two of the numbers mixed up.
True on the first one, yes, not sure I’ve ever heard of System Sensor making a detector with that combination of sensors though.
Ah okay. No surprise with Simplex though given their extreme proprietaryness in recent years.
As Zach said, those brands have their systems installed through third-party service companies. If we look at them using the main point of this topic, I’d say most aren’t bad, though some like Gamewell-FCI & even Notifier (thanks to their Inspire series) have become heavily proprietary over the years.
You can’t go by just one shoddy install of a particular brand to think that all are like that: not all companies are the same.
This
It would have helped if you posted the model number instead of just a photo of it, as I can’t know what it is just from that (I found it anyway however). No wonder I don’t know about it though: it’s one of their European products.
It’s made for both markets under all Honeywell brands here
It’s an intelliquad fsc-851
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Oh, had no idea Notifier rebranded it. I found the original System Sensor version, which is seemingly only sold in Europe
Anyway, on with the intended topic of this “thread”…
Not a big fan of Siemens either
Yeah: they’re another manufacturer with a proprietary business model, for one thing.
Mmh I guess I should say that my ASD Alpha E6 has a place here…
No, it’s far from being a bad panel at all, but it has a few interesting, oddities.
First, the buttons are… I’ll get to the point: they’re terrible. They’re kinda mushy-feeling and don’t register presses very well, I had a DEF Polaris C2/6/10 before, felt the exact same way.
Second, albeit a mild inconvenience rather than a full blown annoyance, the bezel (dress panel?), it screws in but the screws are unfortunately not captive and are easy to lose. Plus the threaded inserts tend to break free (something I’ll have to fix on mine).
Third, while you don’t need specific software to program it and you can easily get the documentation, it’s a bit tough to figure out the programming options on it.
But at the same time, it has some redeeming qualities… So there is a silver lining here:
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It’s a very versatile panel that can easily be expanded (either more zones, or a fire suppression card, on some versions you can add a relay card), plus it’s very compact.
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The bottom side of the panel has a removable “hatch” that you can drill holes into to pass the cables, instead of having to drill holes into the case.
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As I said, there’s no need for specific software or anything like that, you just need to punch in a key combo to program stuff, different codes for different items that you can program (like cross zone detection or agent release delay, on mine at least)
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The terminals are all laid out in-line and can be taken out, even though it takes a bit of force to do so.
That detector has been rebranded my many Honeywell brands so it’s hard to tell what the model number is without out looking at the label pasted on the back of the detector head
I don’t know wht people hate Edwards/EST.
My boss worked for Edwards for a long time, among some other manufacturers. For fire technicians like me, EST is actually great to work with. My boss made a good point that for EST systems, the ISO modules have their own address, whereas Mircom and majority of manufacturers doesn’t. So when replacing a system, trying to find ISOs can be a tough thing on a Mircom system.
Plus mapping makes it easy to find faults. So maybe from a collectors standpoint it sucks, but working in the field, I love it. Simplex I find the worst to work with, you think Edwards is proprietary, Simplex is way worse.
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Personally I don’t like EST’s panels. Had a Fireshield Plus that wasn’t the greatest panel. Comparing other panels it size like the MS-5UD,4006 and 5208, it’s inferior. I heard a lot of people hate the EST2. Have a friend who is a technician who has said that he hates the EST2 and had multiple issues with it. There’s also another thing with EST which is bad but that might be a liability here. So I will not tell
Simplex is reliable but JCI is the only distributer so if you get screwed over by JCI, you either have to deal with them or get another company but remember, only JCI programs Simplex systems. If Simplex worked like Notifier where there are authorized distributors and had ESDs like a long time ago (1990s or 2000s) they would be probably as common as Notifier or maybe it would be the most common.
But if you thought Simplex was bad, take a look at Siemens, they take the cake for most proprietary brand.