AboutDave Neuweiler Expertise The design and application of burglary and fire systems for homes and businesses. Helping alarm owners understand how their system works. Helping to troubleshoot false alarm problems. Questions about monitoring issues.
Experience Over a quarter century in the industry. Experience in installation, service, and monitoring centers. Training manager for a national protective services company; director of education and training for a national trade organization for for alarm dealers.
Question Hi there, my house has a DSC PC5010 Power832 alarm system.
There is a GE 240-COe carbon monoxide detector wired into
the system. The CO detector has started flashing the green
light and chirping loudly every 5 mins - very annoying! The
manual for the CO detector says this is the end of sensor
life indicator and the unit must be replaced. It says the
hush/test button will silence the chirping for 36 hours but
it doesn't work. My question is - if I just disconnect the
CO detector, will it trigger an alarm? And if so, is it a
simple matter to deactivate that input and then disconnect
it? I'd like to just remove it. Any help you can give me
would be appreciated!
Thanks
Joe
Answer Hello Joe, and thanks for your question.
If you disconnect your CO detector, you'll likely have a trouble condition (not an alarm). This is because the circuit connecting the CO detector is supervised to alert you if a wire is broken or disconnected to the detector.
You can bypass this, however. After you remove the detector, you'll need to find two things. First, you need to identify which terminals on the main control panel were used for the CO detector.
Second, you need to find the end-of-line resistor, which is part of the circuit supervision scheme. If correctly installed, the resistor will be connected to the contact points in the detector. Sometimes though, installers take a shortcut and install the resistor in series with the circuit at the control panel.
Just disconnect both wires from the panel, the connect that resistor to those terminals, and all will be well.
I hope this helps, and please write again if you have a follow-up question.
