A Desperate Request for Help to Aid My Sanity
Ok... I'm not sure where else to turn to as my work place is unable to get in contact with the installation company in regards to fixing our current Fire Alarm system.
Currently I work at a hotel property and two days ago we suffered a heavy bout of rain that has messed up our internal system to no end. Our current Fire Alarm system is an Edwards iO64 or an iO1000, I'm not sure what the difference is or how to tell them apart.
The problems that I have been facing is we have been having constant notification alarms going off every few minutes at my front desk about water valve issues when we have already identified that no such issue exists on our current property. That being said, I have received confirmation from my Regional Manager to go to whatever lengths I have to to get this figured out, as having Alarm notifications pop off when we're trying to check guests in does not look good as you would imagine.
I have done my best to read over our user manual and to look over our blue prints to figure out what would signify this Alarm notification panel, but to no avail. If there is anyone out there that can even give me an inkling of advice, such as whether this panel would be considered an NAC Device/Panel or what, I am desperate enough to send whatever pictures and information about my system to anyone who can help me. All I want to do is just disable two Alarm panels that keep chirping every few minutes, I plan on letting the actual installation company do their job once my company finally gets in contact with them.
Posted Sep 3, 2021, 5:58 AM UTC
It would help if you provided the exact wording of the point(s) in question when it/they appear on screen in an off-normal state.
From what you described (based on your rain comment), I would venture to guess you're getting intermittent ground faults or communication failures on a module. Points can be disabled on a system to prevent them from continuing to alert the panel intermittently, but you really should get in touch with the appropriate service provider to come out to do this or walk you through it. Does your service provider not have an emergency/after hours phone number?
It does not to my knowledge, the owners of my hotel are the ones that do all the communication with the installation company in regards to these sort of things.
As for the points that appear on the screen, the main ones are listed as 'VALVE 182 FIRE PUMP MAIN WATER VALVE', followed by 'Loop 1 Map Fault' and 'Loop 1 Map Mismatch'. Another occasional alert that pops up is 'System Ground Fault'.
Sure sounds like water is somewhere it should not be. To get into semantics a bit, in the fire alarm industry there are installation companies, monitoring companies, and service companies. What you need is a service company. While this MAY be the same company as the one who originally installed the system, it is not necessarily the same company.
All that aside, you probably have water that is touching the wiring or an electrical component on a device. If you want corporate to jump on this issue, write an email to your superiors - not a phone call, but an email - and say "the fire alarm panel is notifying me of issues that I fear could compromise the protection of the hotel in the event of a fire", or something similar. There is no way they can ignore or push off a written, time stamped email that says they are aware that they have an issue with the system.
Thank you for the advice, I'm sending all this information to my Regional Manager so she can do what she can to resolve this as soon as possible. No doubt there is water somewhere it shouldn't be, that is a very real issue that I can see being the problem.