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 dave
recently there was a power cut in my area
for 4 hours.eventually when the power was
restored the alarm panel would not
reapond to the code.what can i do to
reset it?
Answer Hello Kevin, and thanks for your question. I've been on the road, else I'd have answered sooner.
We don't have enough clues to offer you a definitive answer, so I'll give you some general suggestions.
All alarm panels have a standby battery that takes over during power failures. The industry standard is for a minimum of 4 hours of standby power, though many manufacturers excede that number.
A healthy, not-to-old battery should have weathered your power failure without trouble.
It's a fact that after several years, these rechargeable batteries can deteriorate and no longer recharge to a useful level. If you know your system's battery is five or more years old, I would suspect that the battery has failed.
Whether this would prevent the code from operating depends on the specific control unit that your system employs. As a generality, the older the system, the more likely that it would prevent the code from operating.
Another possibility is that your system has lost its memory due to a total power loss (AC and battery). Again, as a generality, there is a master or installer's code that would be used to restore the system.
If you have a maintenance agreement with an alarm company, they'll be able to help in either scenario.
Kevin I hope this helps, and please write again if you have a follow-up question.
