I recently built a new house and in the process I installed a DSC 832 security system using a LCD 5500Z keypad. I installed a PC5108 Zone Expander into the system, but the expand appears not to work. I set the jumpers to obtain zones 9 thru 16 on the expander. I entered section 902 to allow the system to sense the expander and then entered section 903 to verify the expander was supervised. All of the previous actions resulted in the correct displays. I do not get any type of alarm from the expander. With no connections to the zones 9 thru 16, I still obtain a ready LED on the keypad. I have gone thru the installation and programming manuals several time in an effort to find some command I have missed. As a side note, zone 2 on the motherboard acts the same way. I can not get it to display an alarm. All other zones operate per their programming instructions. I would appreciate any help with solving these problems so I may use the system at its capactiy. Thanks

Hello-- I had an ADT system installed in my home when I first moved in. Yeah yeah--I'm generally a DIYer, but my house is 100 years old and I was too busy to do all that fishing when I first moved in. Once I looked at the price of buying equipment myself, their deal was a steal for the amount of labor involved in fishing lines in my old house. It's an Ademco system. Well, I'm past my "90 day warranty" (it was installed during the winter), and now I have problems. We've been getting thunderstorms, and they ALWAYS set off the fire alarm. We even had the fire department come once when they couldn't reach us in time on the phone. The idiots at ADT told me that this is "normal" and "all alarms go off during electrical storms". But, since it's past my 90 days, they'll look at it for a minimum $120 service call! After this last storm when it went off 3 times, I looked at the panel to just fix the thing myself. The panel is powered by 2 power wires going to a non-ground wall transformer (2 plug). I looked at the screws on the board. One was labeled, "Earth Ground". For some odd reason, there was NO WIRE GOING TO IT! Just a resistor hanging off it (why, I don't know). I'm an electrical engineer, so this makes sense as a cause of my problems. If there's a surge, there's nowhere for the current to bleed off. So I hooked some heavy gauge wire to the Earth Ground and to my house ground. But I have to wait for the next storm to see if it works. Any other advice on protecting my system from having the fire alarm go off during storms? I also put a surge protector on it, but I doubt that will do much. I'd hate to have to buy a $1000 active UPS or SOLA CVS.