How To Silence The External Siren?

[kenniewaters]

OK, some background first.

More than 20 years ago I installed an alarm system in my home.

It was a Skytronix panel.

No remote keypad, no PIRs, 'real' bell outside, sounder inside, most of the wiring was 4 wire.

Some even just two wire. Contacts on all the windows. One or two now damaged and shorted.

I recently decided to upgrade and improve quality and reliability.

I have bought a new panel (with remote keypad), a siren (ext bell), sounder, several PIRs and a drum of 6-wire cable.

No pets in the house.

In order to learn fully about the panel operation I have wired it up on a work bench.

I connected the panel, siren, keypad, internal sounder and one PIR.

All tamper switches are enabled. All of the basics seem to work fine.

The manufacturer of the panel and bell is HKC in Ireland.

I suspect it may be a badged control board but not sure about that.

Most every installation I have seen uses HKC panels.

The model I have is a basic 8 zone unit called an SW812.

In order to properly 'play' I have jumpered the tamper on the panel and the siren box.

That way I can leave the covers off the panel and siren while I explore them.

I am fully conscious of voltage dangers and especially the 120v to the siren.

I have a few questions which I hope are allowed without breaking forum rules.

To keep it simple I'll just ask one question in this thread.

Several of my tests cause the siren to activate. It is *VERY* loud.

So I have disconnected one lead from the siren.

I can still just hear a very low noise from the siren (leakage current?) when it is active.

That way I know it's working but my eardrums stay intact.

In order to add another PIR to the setup I power off the panel (in engineer/service mode) and disconnected its standby battery. This of course caused the external siren to activate. Not a problem on the work bench.

But, if the siren (called a SABB), is mounted high on the side of my house wall, it is out of reach.

If in those circumstances I need to add/replace a PIR, the SABB will sound and irritate the neighbours.

Is it possible to prevent this happening? There is a line to the SABB called SABB hold.

I am wondering if I can apply a voltage to this to 'hold off' the bell?

Am I correct? What would I do exactly? What does a qualified installer do?

[thinks now: why do I need to disconnect the battery in the panel? If I leave the battery connected

then the board is live but I can safely work on connecting new PIRs or contacts?

And the SABB will remain 'held off'.

Am I correct?

Removal of the mains power is just for safety.]

What say ye?

Ken

P.S. Just learned that SABB = Stand Alone Bell Box

[james.wilson]

Ken

No one can or will answer the above regarding the bell as that would be disablement advice. Obviously this cannot be discussed on a public forum.

If you remove power to your panel, mains and backup battery etc, then your sounder should activate. Thats what its designed to do.

James

[kenniewaters]

HHmmm. OK. Apologies.

Can I ask the following question:

If a professional installer is called to add an additional PIR to an existing system, would he/she do the following:

1. Put panel in service mode

2. Remove mains power

3. Open the panel

4. Leave the battery connected

5. Connect the additional wiring

6. Close up, restore mains and test

Ken

[james.wilson]

Sort off, depends on the panel, for instance the dimension has additional fuses for aux outputs etc so I would remove them and power doen the relevant circuits not the whole panel. But if you power the whole panel down there is less risk of damaging anything, ie a slipped wire, screwdriver etc can blow your panel if powered up. But how a diyer owuld do something compared to a pro installer, there will be significant differences.

James

[kenniewaters]

Reading between the lines, you have answered my question.

Guess I picked a poor title for the thread

Thank you James.

Ken.

[shinfieldmonkey]

as redbull i would only power down the aux circuit on too many old systems i've powered down the mains (the battery was dead) and then had to reprogram.

[kenniewaters]

What what??

If I power down mains AND disconnect the battery, do I lose all the panel settings? (zone names, timings, etc etc).

I assumed a modern panel would keep all that stuff in flash memory or somesuch.

I must do a test before I keypad in all the zone names.

Ken

[shinfieldmonkey]

most panels have a nvm to store the info but some don't

not knowing the panel i can't say either way

but beware

[james.wilson]

ANy panel 'can' losse its programmin on power up, but not under normal conditions. ie if some panels are powered up or down in the wrong order they can be wiped.

Old panels do loose as hey need power to rememeber.

[Gopher]

Yeah poor topic title.

As has been previously said just power down the AUX side depends on the panel if it's got a fuse or not, 1 range of panels I know of doesn't but does have overload / short circuit protection - Scantronic.

so from your list of 1 to 6

1 to 4 yes

5 Disconnect the just the +ve aux supply to the PIR's

6 Carefully feed in new cabling and connect up as require to zone, tamper & AUX power

7 Reconnect the +ve aux supply

8 Check everything is secure.

9 Close panel, put mains supply back on

10 program in the new zone as required and test it's operation

11 exit back to "day" mode.