I heard a beeping tone at work and found this...

Fire Alarm General Discussion
1

I was at work setting up for an event later that evening and I heard something coming from the delivery entrance. Being a curious person, I walked backed there to find the red Honeywell keypad (which i thought was just the security system) was beeping. It said something along the lines of “Hit * for Trouble Zones”. Here are few pictures I took after hitting “*”. (NOTE: First Picture the LCD was mid-text change)

I notified my boss and he called Tyco right away; no further details that I know of. Can anyone maybe tell me about the troubles and/or the system. We have Gentex Commander 2’s and Ademco T-Bars.

2

Eh, nothing to worry about, just duct detectors!

“Trbl 032 Smoke AHU4” means that the duct detector for Zone 32 (which is on Air Handler Unit #4) is in trouble, same for “Trbl 031 Smoke AHU3” that would be the duct detector for Zone 31 (which is in Air Handler Unit #3). Duct detectors can be powered either by the panel itself, a separate 24VDC power supply, the 24VAC power from the air handler unit, or directly from 120VAC power. More than likely, this is simply a power supply trouble, seeing as there are at least 2 duct detectors in trouble. Maybe someone shut down the power to both air handlers or there is a problem with the 24VDC power supply.

They are just duct detectors. IMHO - let’s put a smoke detector in one of the dirtiest environments of the building and see what happens just doesn’t seem like a good idea. Wire the AHUs to shutdown with fire alarm activation and use open area protection. Again, just my opinion!

3

Hahaha I agree. Thanks for the information, I was a bit worried but the problem is solved I believe. I can ask my boss what the technician said or maybe even get a look at the paperwork!

4

I saw that a couple of years ago at our Pizza Ranch. When I went in I could hear the N-ANN-80 was beeping. So I looked and saw the below display.

Note the middle 2 lines might have been reversed.

5

Ducts are always set to supervisory (or trouble I guess, although that’s not standard) because of nuisance alarms. Their sensitivity is usually set low too.

Whenever the AC kicks on for the first time of the year a bunch of dust gets shaken lose and sets everything off usually.

6

Talk about Irony. I went to Pizza Ranch tonight with my parents, walked into the entryway and lo and behold:

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This time they had silenced the piezo. Also the time and date are wrong if you care about that.

7

I’m not completely sure what a supervisory is can somebody tell me?

8

Supervisories are generally for lower-priority initiating devices such as duct detectors and sprinkler valve tamper switches.

9

Basically, a supervisory signal is something between an ALARM and TROUBLE signal. It means that the property owner should take immediate action on an event of the fire alarm system but the system is usually NOT impaired from working correctly. Will send a signal to the monitoring company but generally fire department does not respond. Some examples of supervisory signals:

Sprinkler valve closed
Sprinkler dry system low air
Fire pump running/power fault/trouble
Duct detector in alarm (can also trip the FACP as an ALARM condition)
Carbon monoxide Detector in alarm
Smoke exhaust fan activated
Remote power supply trouble
Releasing panel trouble
Residential smoke detector alarm (seen in condo/apartment buildings or hotels - when the smoke detector in the private unit goes into alarm, it will sound inside the unit and trip a supervisory signal at the building FACP, generally does not cause full alarm activation)