FIRE ALARM unit - Fault finding and battery test | Thomas Nagy
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- Опубліковано 21 лип 2019
- Dave and I tested a fire alarm unit at an Amnesty Bookstore in Hammersmith. Took a while to get down to the source of the problem, but I eventually found it (amidst a pile of rat shit). I'm also explaining a little bit on testing batteries as lots of people were interested in the comments.
Here a link to a similar model of the battery tester I used:
bit.ly/2OcT5pH
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Thomas Nagy
WARNING:
This video is for entertainment purposes only. If you use the information from this video for your own projects then you assume complete responsibility for the results.
8:49 You hit the nail on the head there. I work for a UK fire alarm system manufacturer and the number of times people blame the equipment when the real issue is their install......
You'll be pleased to know that I'm not watching your vids (or anyone else's) for the purpose of doing a trained electricians job. I found you through a particularly deep UA-cam rabbit hole one evening. A bit of backstory, I'm autistic and have CPTSD stemming primarily from 2 house fires and an incident with the fire alarm system at my primary school (TLDR: the room the boiler was in had some upgrades done to it or something and they didn't think to silence the detectors nearby).
When I was around 13-15, I decided the only way to not be scared of fire, was to know what it was doing. So I learned about fires & the physicsy-chemically side of them.
One of my Special Interests (that is, the things that an autistic person enjoys or focuses on) is tech, especially smart home tech. I discovered the Nest Protect which was absolutely the COOLEST thing I'd ever seen, and that got me interested in fire & home safety systems...
Blah blah blah eventually I stumbled on that old fire system test video from like 2 years ago, and was immediately enthralled by your realness & humour.
Closest your videos got me to be an idiot and do these things IRL was inspired me to perhaps pursue a fire systems design course; put my interest to good use.
Keep it up.
Hats off to you, pal! That's pretty cool, if watching my videos has helped you out in some way. BTW: What's that deep UA-cam rabbit hole you were referring to ... ??? ;-)
Legit, at my place of work, to be "allowed" to use a step ladder above the first step I had to sit through a 30 min death by powerpoint about how to use a stepladder.
thats because technically you are working at height XD
f
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Thank you tomas for posting this vlog for a Monday night and keep up the good work.
Can't get enough of tom's channel, Can't wait for the next one.
Have used the exact ACT battery tester on work experience! Brilliant pieces of kit they are, quite accurate as well!
Always a great watch while doing paperwork on an evening 😁👍🏼
I have the same battery tester. It's a great tester, but alot of technicians dont know that those should be sent back to ACT annually for recalibration. As an edit: ACT sells a self calibration kit also. Keep up the great videos Thomas.
got the same battery tester ! fantastic bit of kit , also gives you the ampere hour range on the side for reference which makes it super easy to diagnose faulty batteries
When you post videos on fire alarms it naturally catches my eye 👀 Hope all is well Thomas
Good Tip, when moving the ceiling tiles you use the back of your hand so you do not get dirty fingerprints all over it.
Got one of these to do this week as well! Fire alarm has got fault lights all over!
I use the exact same ACT battery tester here in the USA. It works great. I had the gold one like yours but it walked off. I have the chrome model now. I test alarm batteries on every call.
try finding a fault on an addressable system that has had all the heads replaced trying to sort out fault. Last resort was contacting the manufacture and them digging into the firmware and going 'oh yeah we have a bug, here's an updated version'. Now that is a joke, 1 year later and £££ lost of call outs and a customer not happy.
Conventional panels are a piece of piss to find a fault in theory until you come onto a panel you've never seen before and have no clue on what is what.
Keep up the good work pal, enjoying the videos.
Brilliant love the reading there Tom. Gotta teach them old people 😂😂
great vid. having just finished my level 2 really interesting to see what a fire alarm based job is all about - we dont learn this stuff in college!
In fairness 75% of domestic electrical work is just common sense. I doubt there is a house in the country that doesn’t include work done by a DIYer. There’s also plenty of shocking work done by supposedly competent sparks.
Im a spark and rewired my house, is that diy or professional work lol?😂
Not if you're working to BS7671 which everyone should do. It's anything but common sense.
Id have to disagree with your first statement my friend. Wiring up a plug or changing a light fitting should be generalised common sense but even those abilities seem lacking for most common folk these days. Sparky's or engineers such as fire, security, access, nurse call etc are individually specialised in those areas. There's is a lot more to it than just running cables and hanging lights, lol, having said that. Sadly, from experience I would say there's 1 good engineer to ever 5 bad one. Most are just too lazy to do the job right and i spend all day running around after the dodgy gits, lol still works works ;)
I agree with you on this Tom!
Love your fire alarm videos! :)
Nice job again like always
Great vid thomas 👍
Great video man
You’re too addictive to watch Tom
Great video yet again.......😁📽️👊👍✌️🏍️
Those wiring/DIY books are all over the place here in the US. Also as an American fire alarm enthusiast I love these videos seeing how UK systems are different than our own.
Also here in the US the equivalent to Job and Knock would be called Trunk Slammers.
The tips of those clips are made to fit on the spades on batteries tom :)
New favourite youtuber. These videos are strangely moreish. Keep up the good work sir. Twinflex is bollocks though x
Cheers mate! Glad you enjoy the vids!
another great vid
Great video All ways look forward to seeing them. Not a electrician but work in the motor trade loads of health and safety rubbish in this trade. Keep up the good work.
Hi pal, yeah I guess all trades struggle with that, it's often just a load of bollocks, not practicable at all if you ask me, but hey ho!
Class videos Thomas love them not a sparks
6:08 saw a Sky installer the other day adding another feed out of a pre-existing dish on a bungalow. Ladder bolted down to the paving slabs, eye-bolts in to the brick for ratchet straps, hardhat, full body harness. I almost cried :'(
The part where you're looking above the ceiling tiles reminds me of Aliens I can just imagine 5-6 rats racing towards you, then you jumping down and spraying your pulse rifle with a badly fitting helmet and armour.
1:23 was so unexpected that I literally jumped. 😂😂
Love the videos.what brand of two way radios do you use in the van and as handhelds
Just saw your van pass by in central London!
:-)
good comment tom, i might work for a company involved with making fire detection systems the amount of reports we get with the equipment reporting faults because of installations not complying to the BS standards in incredible
Brilliant video Tom, keep up the ranting! Give us good as you get. 👍
In terms of H&S: don’t stand and work on the top three steps (including a step forming the
very top of the stepladder) unless there is a suitable handhold (which could include something above your head)... you can if you have a handhold. It's not illegal anyway, only guidance.
It's stupid. Guidance given by some pencil neck who has never been up a ladder.
Brilliant
As a general rule of thumb, your waist area shouldn't be any higher than the top tread as this is where your centre of gravity is. You can easily lose your balance or have the stepladder topple from beneath if you climb any higher. Dave is clearly using the wrong size stepladder, 6 treads fit nicely in the van and are easy enough to carry round on site.
Sweet!!! First post!
Hi Tom. Great video on the fire alarm system. Was wondering if you have got the Ferret WiFi inspection camera it's brilliant for voids and ceilings and it attaches to superods. 👍
Those Tyco/minerva smoke detectors are really good. Is the mains coloured zone wiring a common thing in the uk?? In australia fire circuit inner conductors are usually white and red. Brown and blue inside the fire panel usually means internal 240.
Also fire alarms do go wrong and there not all perfect but well designed installed and commissioned serviced always works
ms security can u just stop if u don’t like them then burn to death you always have to critasise everything just keep ur opinion to urself bcos he is the election ur the viewer if u want to bring it up bring it up to someone who actually and generally cares
Galvanized band, or as we called in Harland & Wolff shipyard, bicycle chain. We used the plastic coated version to clip cables onto tray.
Never heard it called that but I’m stealing that now; it’s a much better name! 🍻
Powersonic batteries have correction factors to apply when using the ACT test meters (According to Powersonic).
Funny video mate :D Great content and chatter as always! :
Great video. Do you see much of the really rigid pyro cable that used to be used for fire alarms? Those kind of looked like normal cabling. I have worked in a building where they had all the emergency lighting run using this type of cable from a big main battery as well. Cheers
Just can't help myself Tom 🤣 It's from ADT so it is rubbish the twinflex. De commission it and quote for an Advanced Panel or a gent. There miles ahead of any others atm. Great video tho. Always intriguing when you do fire alarms 👍🏻
I’ve got that book and it’s what I used to become an elektric.
Electrician
I genuinely have that book... never actually used it though!
With fire systems tom the batterys should always have the install date on them also have you done any training and courses with fire alarms
Hi Thomaz, I am from Brazil, I am an electrician like you I happen to every problem of low quality material so I buy a screwdriver as a kinpex or wiha it is impossible to find, in LONDON it has everything from GERMANY, if I had a job in LONDON electricity would be a big hug tomorrow.
TOP RIGHT AT 0:39 HAD ME DIEING HAHAHAH
;-)
How do you know how to wire up any smoke detector?
Wow! In america we are not supposed to step on the top rung but got uk
(Fire alarm sounder goes off) Thomas: there she blows!
At 9:36 but it goes off 4 seconds later
Tom. Please ignore the moaners. These people have nothing else to do. What you do is incredibly interesting and there are so many people who would watch just to see how it's done without actually wanting to attempt it themselves.
Gent is the best system in the UK and that's the same with Twin flex
And here was me thinking Tom was just gonna put EOL resistor in the panel 🙈
😂😂😂 so glad I have come across this channel.... sorry fellas!
Hi Tom, I just have a sticker with my company details on which I stick to the batteries and the date and technicians name get written on.
The build quality of rafiki is not great compared to Apollo and Hochiki I know most fire and security engineers prefer the above
Fp200 can be tan with mains it’s a screened cable.
It shouldn’t be ran with any other service due to the fact it’s a safety system.
No interference would be induced
What everybody’s thoughts on domestic installer training. Worth it or not???? Go
Wait for it,
Had a call out last night and a twin flex pro smoke head had gone down 😂😂😂😂😂
Been asked to provide photometric design data for emergency lighting installation of 4x fittings within small commercial unit.....have you ever come across this?
JDR Electrical Services try using data from the fitting manufacturer ,usually 1 lux is required for exit level if you are going to do more emergency lighting probably worth getting the British standard ,unfortunately not cheap
This sounds a bit like being sent to get a new bubble for the spirit level .... ?
6:00 when i had to remove the battery from a smoke detector at my sisters house (She had got a new smoke detector and neither me nor her fancied trying to remove the thing from the ceiling, as it is over a staircase) im pretty certain i had to stand on the platform bit at the top (the step ladder thing I was using rather curiously had a handle like thing as though it intends on people standing on the top of it)
How do i clear a prealarm fault on the addressable fire alarm plane?
When I tested smoke detectors I used a square of corrugated card board to waft air across the detector.
😄😄 oh boy, you crack me up
👍👍
Lol, TwinFlex! Guy's! Give me a multi paneled Gent system any day of the week, hahaha. TFs panels are sound little units though. Small installs ideal does what it says in the tin
I actually like the twinflex stuff. Like you say it's almost always installed badly, by sparkys! hehehe ;)
H&S with step ladders is a nightmare, I did a course on it and basically the top of the steps should be waist height, making small steps useless unless your a midget
That literature helps thinning out the gene pool and makes for awesome Darwin Awards!
That book was probably written in the 14th era, when DIY was king and everybody else was a cowboy :-)
I went to a technical high school and have electrical training from a licensed electrician, but beyond changing a switch, socket or fixture I am hesitant. In America there is a law that you can work on your own stuff but if you work on someone else property and something terrible happens you a criminally liable. My teacher told us the story of a elderly couple who had a neighbor do work on a new furnace. The neighbor made a mistake and the furnace housing and part of the duct-work was made live. The couple had their young grand-kids over and as they waved goodbye to their parents out the window they leaned on the live heat vent and another part of the duct work that was earthed. Both kids died, and my teacher was the electrician that was called in after to fix the furnace.
Ohhh
Are you buying a mini tower or podium now then tom
Not for that kind of money, sorry;
I've got that book
Can someone explain to me, why are these batteries still not li-ions? Same with exit and emergency lights, NiCads everywhere!
Not an expert, but I guess because they're safer to continuously trickle charge. Li-ions don't take kindly to trickle charging!
Because you don't change what works without a damned good reason.
From a technical perspective NiCads are more temperature stable, last longer, aren't full of smoke & fire, don't require complicated battery management and are almost completely recyclable. Changing to Lithium would involve a costly and time consuming process to get them approved for use in critical applications.
90msg90 I think their are regulations on not using lithium for fire/emergency systems
Price.
Li-Ion batteries are expensive both for just the battery and for the more complex charging circuitry needed to prevent over charge and discharge.
Lead Acid and NiCd batteries are cheaper, and the charging circuitry is much simpler.
Li-Ion car battery = $800 USD, Li-Ion battery management system = $200 USD.
Compare that to just a regular lead-acid car battery at around $100.
With NiCd and Lead Acid batteries, the charging circuit can (and therefore usually is) extremely simple. All you need is a transformer with the appropriate output voltage, a single diode to turn the AC into pulsing DC, and a current limiting resistor if you are charging NiCd batteries. Doesn't even need a smoothing capacitor!
For NiCd batteries the idea is to charge the cell at such a slow rate that it takes 10 to 20 hours to charge it from flat. This is called "trickle charging" and NiCd cells can tolerate it for 3-5 years before needing replacement.
Lead Acid batteries are similarly tolerant of constant charging regardless of actual state-of-charge, however the numbers are different.
On the other hand, Li-Ion batteries will burst into flames if left on any kind of constant charge. They require circuitry which can turn off the charging current, which is more complex and there are many chips designed specifically for the task of protecting lithium ion cells from over charge or over discharge.
Battery tester from ACT Meters own website is on sale at the moment 😀👍 www.actmeters.co.uk/battery-testing/chrome-ibt
Thomas could you do a video regarding SPD (Surge Protection Device) now installed in consumer units as new regulations?
I have 6 in the van now; vid on them coming soon 👍
@@thomasnagy Your the man
Poo Poo 😂 nice vid bud 👌
Is a Skirting board ladder 😜, I sent email to manufacturer asking for a 3/4 refund 🤷♂️🙈🤣🤣, have got the same ladder 😏
Call out in finchley thats where i live!! Where abouts?
Anyone know how to wire an Apollo smoke head ? And how to wire two together?
Nice ladder I have shame I cant use the second step its just not possible
To test a battery, it must be tested under load, if you use your multimeter you won't get a correct reading because the multimeter is designed to place as light a load on the circuit under test.
John Hill that’s why he didn’t use a multi meter.
@@willgrand461 Yep but you don't have to scroll far to see people here in the comments recommending it...
Health and safety you should be using taller steps. You should have safety glasses on when lifting out tiles. Other than that good video
How are those wires complying with safety regulations?
Here in the Netherlands it is mandatory to have Cables with functional integrity.
The regulation states that a fire in one area can not disable equipment in another, 30 minutes for power and 15 minutes for signal wires.
The wires you're using are normal 110/230 power wires which have no protection what so ever.
Stoney_Eagle that cable is FP200, fireproof cable. 99.9% of fire alarm installations in the UK are wired in that.
You can see the red sheath of the cable when he opens up the panel.
Don't waste your money on a battery tester. Just replace it after three and a half years after the manufacture date.
2:28 not just you pal. I have had a close call in my parents garage going to pick up a paint brush and there was a mouse just sat there, my hand got about 6 inches away and he jumped up and legged it to the side and scaled the wall and got out through the roof.
It's a fucking night mare working on such stuff ... not my preferred way of working, but I've seen it all: rat shit, dog shit, mouse traps, spider nests .... ugh
Yes they are pricey I’m looking at starting a tool and equipment hire business next year and I’m looking at price of tools
I find the twin flex fire alarms are far too sensitive.
I remember when it was just u working on the job
Tom, how do you find working in this heat & humidity? Especially in a thick Polo shirt?
Right now I survive (just) in cargo shorts and thin white t-shirts.....doesn't look as professional as I'd like, but I end up soaked!! Guess it's just my body? Never stinks, it's just liquid...but kinda embarrassing
pffft ..... come work in Brisbane Australia, then you'll know about heat and humidity :) eg: its 540pm on july 23, middle of winter, it is currently 24.2 °c
@@Ressy66 I'm in the states at the moments, where I'm at, has had day-time temperatures averaging between 36.2c. ~ 40.5c. Humidity has been at 70% ~ 90%. Heat index two days ago was 49.4c. Today brings some much appreciated relief with lower humidity around 60% and the day temperature is going to be much cooler at 27.7c. 24.2c is months away for weather here, I should grab a flight to Brisbane!
WTFudge? First on Tom's upload? Wake everybody! View/Like/Subscribe!!!
HI THOMAS NAGGY
YOU IN GOING NORTHOLT NEAR Belvue school
Fortunately it's perfectly legal to do your own electrical work in the UK. Yes you can even change a CU if you pay building control a couple of hundred quid to inspect and certify. Done it all my life, did my 18th edition exams (yes passed fine) got the correct test equipment. Tom is clearly excellent at what he does, but seen too many awful 'professional' jobs. Sits back and waits for screaming :)