Took me 6 hours to find a single bad tamper wire in a 40 zone panel

I was out at this commercial job in Tacoma last Tuesday. Brand new Vista panel, 40 zones all wired clean. Kept getting a tamper fault on zone 27 every time I armed. Checked the door contact, the magnet spacing, even swapped the contact. Still showed tamper. Finally after like 6 hours I found it - the wire was nicked under a staple in the attic. One tiny scrape in the jacket causing a partial short to ground. Never seen that before. Anyone else run into weird partial shorts that took forever to track down?

2 comments

2 Comments

cole_davis471mo ago

Man, that's the kind of thing that makes you question your whole life choices right there... Reminds me of the time I spent three hours hunting a phantom voltage drop in a panel only to find a dead spider under a terminal.

pat_park1mo ago

Oh man, @cole_davis47 that's brutal but also kinda funny in a twisted way. Three hours for a dead spider, man... I've been there with similar ghost hunts in control cabinets. Always seems like the dumbest stuff takes the longest. Like, you're prepped for some serious wiring error and it's just... bug guts. Makes you wanna slap yourself but also laugh at the same time.