Wattage

Hey Guys, so I’m using a silent knight Evs-100 and I’m setting the wattage to setting A (8 watts) to each speaker.

And randomly I get a Ground fault on this board I’m currently running 36 devices on each circuit and I’m using 7. What can this cause.

I may be missing something here. You are using seven circuits with thirty- six speakers each tapped at 8 watts each? The panel is grossly overloaded. I’m not familiar with the panel but the specifications say it’ has a hundred watt capability.

2 Likes

That’s what I was thinking but my new “manager” said it should work. I kept telling him the math ain’t mathing with the wattage.

And eight watts on a speaker is considerable amount of power. Like for an area with a high level of ambient noise such as a manufacturing facility. Was the project engineered? There should be some drawings and calculations made. At the specs you stated you are almost triple the panel’s capacity on just one circuit.

I’ve only ever seen a few system drawings, but the drawings I’ve seen didn’t indicate speaker wattage or horn volume, only the strobe candela. It’s possible that the manager decided to install everything as 8-watt to minimize the chance of the audibility being too low, without considering the system capacity. I’ve heard that many Advances get left on high volume this way when they could be lowered.

The speaker watts and strobe candela should definitely be part of a set of engineered fire alarm drawings. That is the only way a proper battery size calculation and equipment list can be made. Generally, most areas can be served with speakers properly placed and tapped at 1/4 or 1/2 watt each. Louder is not better.