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.
EngineerGal wrote at 2006-09-23 17:11:46
I'm guessing from the second part of the first line of your answer that you are a FireX employee. I have seen your "make sure your batteries are fresh" answer several times, and quite frankly, I'm tired of seeing it.
There are few people who are stupid enough to replace an old battery for an old. Please stop insulting people.
This is the second house for which this has happened to me. Both my son and I are engineers, and my father is a technology professor. Trust me, we all three know how to use a voltmeter. 9.1 volts. 9.4 volts. 9.3 volts. 9+ volts. Yeah, there is voltage across the terminals! The chirping continues.
After trying the Search engine of the invensys/FireX http://www.icca.invensys.com/firex website, I finally clicked once on Customer Service > Main Area (takes you to their worthless Search site) and then clicked on Customer Service (again) > Technical Support. There you will FINALLY find a toll-free number, but you have to call between 7AM and 5:30PM Central U.S. time.
Thank heaven my parents' high frequency hearing is gone. That will make only one of us who goes insane this weekend until I can get some answers from these invensys/FireX people.
Dave Neuweiler wrote at 2006-11-01 00:48:12
Hello EngineerGal, and thanks for your comments.
For the record, I am not an employee of Firex, nor do I endorse or recommend any vendor or product in this forum.
I volunteer my time and expertise (as limited as it may be in some arenas)to help people with issues that they have with any and all types of alarms, detection devices, and systems. There's no payback for these contributions, save the occasional thanks from folks for whom my advice was helpful.
It should be obvious to even the casual observer that a person in my position can't know the technical expertise of the folks who write in. It's for this reason that I always write to the lowest common denominator.
If you are an engineer, I'm sure you appreciate the application of sound methodolgy to solve any problem. It's a fact that weak batteries are the number one cause of chirping smoke detectors. Therefore I will always seek to eliminate the obvious first. Any competent troubleshooter would do the same, don't you agree?
I'm guessing that you were frustrated and angry about the problem you had with your detectors. If so, fair enough.
But your comments were not helpful toward solving the problem. If you'd like to contribute to solving these problems for all who encounter them, please share what you learned from the manufacturer.
