Vent: Panel batteries installed backwards by the last crew at a condo in Austin

Found three out of twelve DSC panels with the battery leads reversed on a service call last Tuesday, and each one had tripped the trouble relay and wiped the programming. The 5-year-old backup battery was dead in two of them, and the owner had no clue because the keypad just showed 'low batt' for weeks. How often do you guys run into polarity mess-ups like this on newer installs, and do you double check the leads before you power up or trust the color?

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charles_chen9323d ago

Brace yourself for this one, because whoever wired those panels clearly skipped the "red means positive" part of alarm school. I've seen this exact mess maybe five times in the last ten years, and it's always the same story, some guy in a hurry who trusts the colors on a 20 year old battery instead of looking at the terminals. The worst part is the programming wipe, that's not a simple fix, you gotta re-enter every zone and keypad code from scratch. I always flip the meter on before I hook anything up now, takes ten seconds and saves me a return trip. These newer DSC boards are not forgiving either, they'll let you know real fast with a blown fuse and a dead keypad. Good on you for catching it, but tell the owner to get a multimeter if they're gonna let randos touch their panels.