Old timer in Denver showed me why you always check voltage drop on the transformer first

He spent 20 minutes explaining how a bad ground on a Vista 20p was causing ghost alerts that the customer had been fighting for 6 months. Has anyone else run into those tricky intermittent issues where the panel tests fine but acts up overnight?

2 comments

2 Comments

logansullivan2d ago

Honestly, I gotta push back on that a little. "Ghost alerts from a bad ground" sounds like the kind of story a seasoned tech tells to make themselves look smart while blaming the easiest thing. In my experience, if a Vista 20p tests fine during the day but acts up at night, it's way more likely to be a wiring issue in the zones themselves or maybe a bad keypad bus than the transformer ground. I've seen too many guys chase grounds for hours only to find it was a loose resistor on a door sensor or a panel that got flaky because of heat in the attic. Tbh, voltage drop usually means you're already in trouble with the power supply, and a good battery backup would mask that issue anyway.

grant5692d ago

Yeah I had a buddy spend all day checking grounds once and it was just a chewed wire on a window sensor lol.