Veritas 8 tamper fault

[Guest Kev]

We inherited a Veritas 8 alarm with our house. We have had the alarm regularly serviced. We have also had the battery replaced twice (in 2.5 years) and a sensor due to faults.

The battery and a sensor were recently replaced by the engineer because the alarm is going off when not even set.

The tamper light flashes after the code has been entered but this does switch the alarm off. It sets and unsets fine 99% of the time.

The alarm has done it again this morning (this is 4 weeks after the engineer last visited). I know it wasn't set. The tamper light came on after I entered the code.

Can anyone give me an idea of what is wrong with the alarm because I'm getting fed up of the shock of it going off.

[FASTCAR]

Hi ,

All devices should have tamper protection to protect them , even when the system is unset, bell box , rkp , panel lid , pirs etc. Your engineer should be able to determine which one is at fault.

Check all lids and covers are secure.

Regards,

[Guest Kev]

Thanks for the advice - I understand it needs to have the tamper alert, just don't appreciate it at 2am!

I guess my problem is having to get the engineer out yet again - at least £40 a time.

They have been and fixed several parts and inspected it.

I'm not sure if there's much left of it that hasn't been replaced.

Is this a common problem - are we better off getting a new alarm fitted?

[Guest]

Is this a common problem - are we better off getting a new alarm fitted?

63487[/snapback]

It's a common problem in that no matter what panel and devices you have you still get tamper faults from either loose contacts\terminations, faulty tamper switches\springs and\or faulty cables either by third party damage or errors in installation.

You really need an engineer to visit to narrow down the fault to a specific device or piece of cable and then have this replaced\repaired. Fitting a complete new alarm is a tad excessive and may not actually solve the problem unless you replace every piece of cable along with the devices on the system, which would cost a lot more than £40.

[breff]

In cases like this that are intermittent, it boils down to a process of elimination usually. This involves bypassing parts of the tamper system and giving it a go for a period of time. There are devices called tamper splitters which can be fitted that will indicate the problem cable/device. The trick is that each time an engineer visits a step forward should be taken ie. 1st visit bypass bell tamper, try for 2 weeks if all ok then problem is with bell/cable if not reconnect bell tamper and disconnect half of global tamper etc.

If you had a more expensive/professional panel with individual tamper zones the panel would indicate exactly where the tamper lies but with the cheaper panels it just indicates that there is a tamper.

[Brian c]

pressing omit while viewing the event log will narrow it down to a global, bell or keypad tamper IIRC.