17
Last Thursday's install job nearly went sideways because of a bad transformer...
I spent 4 hours tracing a power loop on a Vista 20p at a warehouse off Highway 90, only to find out the transformer was dropping to 14V under load, has anyone else had a transformer test good with no load but fail once the panel was fully wired?
2 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In2 Comments
simonmoore3d ago
Oh man, that's a sneaky one. I had a similar fight with an old DSC 832 once. Tested fine on the bench with just a keypad and a bell, but as soon as I connected all the zones and the communicator, it started acting flaky. Turned out the transformer was actually a 16V unit that was barely putting out 1 amp, not the 2 amps the system needed. The voltage would sag just enough to cause intermittent resets on the dialer but the panel itself never fully crashed. I ended up swapping it with a heavy-duty 18V one from a commercial job and it ran fine for years. Funny how the simplest piece of gear can cause the most headache.
7