I’m asking for help here because our alarm company’s
voice mail box is full and Fire-Lite doesn’t work on weekends!
The low battery alarm is sounding on our MS 9200 box.
I followed the instructions to silence it by pushing the
“acknowledge step” key. It stops the alarm briefly, but
it starts right up again.
I’m hoping one of you can help me so that we don’t have
to listen to that incessant alarm for the rest of the weekend.
Thank you in advance.
Linda
Time for a new alarm company! I’ve never heard of an alarm company that doesn’t answer or return phone calls after hours. At least one that wants to stay in business for long.
But to answer your question, your battery is probably on the threshold of going bad. That’s why it keeps going in and out of trouble. For now, you can disconnect one of the battery terminals. The panel should now stay in trouble without resounding. If it does, there may be an internal fault in the panel and may not be an actual battery issue. There are some panels where disconnecting the battery will cause the battery trouble to go in and out like you are experiencing, but I don’t believe this is one of them.
Disclaimer: Doing this you will be compromising your fire protection. It is very important you resolve the issue immediately. If your building looses power, the alarm system will not work. If this is residential, hotel, dormitory, or any place where people will be sleeping, you need to post a fire watch. In the meantime, call other alarm companies in your area. I’m sure they will be more than happy to take a customer from their competition for being asleep at the switch!
Thank you for your response. We finally reached our tech
and he’s coming out now. Wowser, $250 for the service call / new battery.
We weren’t going to detach the batteries. This is an 11 unit apt building.
The alarm was still working off of AC. A little noise is better than being
unprotected.
Skip the $250 and get yourself two 12V, 7Ah sealed lead acid batteries at your local Academy or Radio Shack. That’s crazy, charging that much for replacing batteries. They’re $30 each retail.
Disclaimer: I am not a tech nor do I claim to be. Lambda can approve or disprove my recommendation.
Yeah, after hours on a weekend won’t be cheap! But with it being an apartment building it’s better to be on the safe side. Although battery issues are very common, I would hope you are having your systems inspected once a year. They should be load testing the batteries during the inspection and replacing them when they test weak. I would also suggest automatically replacing the batteries every three years regardless of how they test. Five years is the maximum allowed by code, but from my experience, they tend to fail at the four year mark. If you have them replaced every three you usually avoid these after hour service calls.
Would such an inspection entail cutting the AC power to the panel and test the signals/battery on battery power?
Actually Netscape, I don’t have an issue with customers replacing batteries themselves. As long as they know what they are doing! We had someone smoke a very expensive alarm panel because they hooked them all up willy nilly. I would also suggest they buy the batteries directly from a battery supplier and not retail. Usually, the retail batteries at the big box stores sit on the shelves for months before they reach the consumer. I’ve seen date codes a year old, and NFPA says the clock starts ticking from date of manufacturing. Yeah, battery prices are crazy, easily a 100% markup. But you figure that $250 is paying for the batteries, plus OT for the tech, plus a truck charge.
Funny thing… the batteries have dates on them… 07 and 09…
I think it’s time for a new tech guy.
Two different years? That’s so not kosher. Get a new tech guy.
Depends on who you talk to. The only problem I have with that method is that if you have a small system, let’s say three smokes, three horn/strobes, one pull, your inspection will take 5 minutes. Larger systems will take hours. At least if you load test batteries you can get a more baseline test, in my opinion. But still important to drop AC power and make sure everything transfers over power to batteries correctly.
I’d like to thank you very much for your advice and info.
I wouldn’t be comfortable changing out the batteries
myself. However, I’ve learned enough to be able to
talk intelligently with the tech when he gets here.
It certainly seems that this shouldn’t have
happened. We do have the yearly inspection.
Unless it’s another issue, it seems the batteries should have been
changed quite awhile ago.
Again, my thanks.
Linda
No problem! We’d be happy to help you in the future, too! 
Yeah, the 2007 battery was way out of date and should have been noted on your last inspection. No excuse for that. The 2009 battery may have been manufactured in Dec 2009 and it would be OK. But in any case, not good to mix old and new batteries. Should have both been replaced at the same time.
With bad/drained batteries the panel is required to resound every 4 hours by code. I agree with Lambda though, sounds like they’re going in and out.
Your alarm company should also be able to respond within 4 hours (also by code…). Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean have a guy on site within 4 hours, but at least have a guy know what the situation is and on his way to fix it if necessary. Typically there’s a 24/7 service line you can call, and they’ll dispatch a tech who’s on call. There might only be one on-call tech for an area, who might either be sleeping (fun being woken up at 2am by a pager), or on another call with bad/no reception temporarily.
As for the after hours $250 service charge, they have to pay a guy overtime with a minimum of 4 hours to drive to wherever you are from his house, do the work, and drive home. His time, tools, vehicle maintenance, gas, etc. all adds up, and whatever they charge also has to cover the home office, any office admins, etc… when you factor in everything, its not like they’re spending $30 and pocketing $220. I also don’t know where you’re located but places like NYC or SoCal are obviously have higher costs of living, but in rural areas a tech might live 2 hours away from the site so they’ll have 5 into it just to replace batteries. I’m not sure what a typical price is for an after hours service call, but I do know I probably can’t call the AC guy out to my house for much less!
Now all that being said, a good alarm company should replace the batteries during an annual inspection so a special trip isn’t needed. We normally replace them every 3-4 years regardless of how they test, sooner if they are failing.
I’m also at a loss as to why he put in old batteries with dif. date codes. Most alarm companies have decently fresh batteries on hand because, as you can imagine, they should be replacing a ton every year as standard maintenance.
This is a 1-man operation / company.
We’re going to have a chat.
We’re in San Francisco… cost of living is a tad high… :lol:
Update:
I misread the battery dates. One was smudged.
They were both 09. The tech thought they’d last
until the next inspection (March, 15). He knocked
the price down to $150.
I feel badly though, because he had to come a long way
in Bay area traffic… and it’s his kid’s birthday.
I guess a lesson learned.
You guys are great!!
Glad it worked out for you. If he tested them back in March, and they were still under the 5 year mark, and tested fine, can’t really blame him. Probably still should of recommended replacement - at least that way he can’t blame himself for interrupting his kids birthday party. But that is one of the down sides of being a one man operation, you cannot take a day off in this industry. That’s his call so I wouldn’t feel bad. I used to work for a guy where it was just me and him and he did all of the after hours calls. He was more of a control freak and wanted that responsibility.