Question about wiring zones after a panel swap gone sideways

I was upgrading a DSC panel at a house near downtown Austin last Tuesday. Got everything labeled on the old board but when I powered up the new 1832, zone 4 kept showing open. Turned out the previous installer used a resistor on the wrong terminal and I missed it because my meter was acting flaky. Has anyone else had a panel swap where the old wiring just didn't match the diagram at all?

2 comments

2 Comments

smith.jordan18d ago

previous installer used a resistor on the wrong terminal" man that brings back a memory. I was helping a buddy swap out a panel in his rental duplex and we found the old guy had like three zones daisy chained together with no resistors at all, just twisted wires and electrical tape. My meter was fine but my brain wasn't, spent about 45 minutes trying to figure out why zone 2 would only show closed if you tapped the side of the box. Turned out the old wiring was so crusty it was basically a random number generator. Sometimes I think these old installers just made stuff up as they went.

ryan71918d ago

@smith.jordan oh man, that crusty wiring situation is a nightmare. My buddy Dave had a similar thing happen at his first house. He kept getting intermittent shorts on zone 4 and pulled the box thinking it was the panel. Turned out the previous guy had stuffed the wires into a junction box with no lid and a mouse had chewed through half the insulation. So you'd get continuity sometimes, then nothing. Took him a weekend to trace it back. You run into that stuff all the time in older places, feels like a scavenger hunt nobody asked for.