Vent: Looked at a 1990s build today and felt old

I walked into a house built in 1997 and the whole alarm panel was wired with solid core phone line daisy chained to 6 zones. The homeowner wanted me to patch into the existing system but I told him straight up it would need a full rewire. Has anyone else had to break that news to a client and watch their face drop?

2 comments

2 Comments

garcia.miles20h ago

lol I basically had to do the same thing a few months back with a late 90s Ademco panel. The homeowner was super attached to it because it was "working fine" but when I showed him the corroded board and the bird nest of wires behind it, he finally got it. I just broke it down real simple like "look, this thing is held together with tape and good vibes at this point, and if it fails mid-week you're paying emergency rates for a whole new setup anyway." He grumbled but ended up thanking me after we put in a new Vista panel and the motion detectors actually worked without false alarms every time a spider breathed on them lol.

sam_harris6818h ago

Respectfully disagree @garcia.miles - sometimes those old Ademcos are bulletproof if the wiring was clean. I've seen Vistas crap out faster than a 90s panel after a lightning storm.