Hi everyone. Hopefully you can help.

I have just bought a new house which is about 17 years old.

it has an ademco alarm in it but it doesn't seem to be on.

it has a user interface by the front door. A control panel under he stairs which has a fuse switch above it. I assume the fuse switch is for that control panel.

the control panel doesn't have a model number anywhere on it. It has a big battery inside it.

it also has 2 smoke detectors which are wired together which do sound an alarm.

it has 2 panic switches through the house.

On the main house fuse board one of the switches has the words alarm/smoke detector labels on it and this is on.

as i mentioned there is no power to the user interface. Need to start by getting power. Where do I begin ?

thanks for your time.
ash


Mod note: member from the UK.

 

Welcome to the forums.

A few pictures of the keypads and the alarm control unit would be helpful to us in recommending a course of action. ......... How-to-insert-pictures

 

The smokes are most likely single-station interconnected 120v smoke alarms and are _not_ connected to the intrusion alarm system.

By the rough description you probably have one of the really old, and fairly primitive Ademco models, but we need more info to even hazard a real guess.

 

Hopefully you can see these pics. Thanks for getting back to me.

 

Looking at the photos, are you outside of North America? That unit has a pretty "Euro" design look to it, and it's not matching up to any of the common databases.

 

Added members location in the UK to the first post.


From the board.....
Pittway Corp 1998 - Looks like model 120 P rev 1.5

Closest match I could find was a Vista 10 UK.

 

That matches pretty close: http://firealarmresources.com/wp-con...-Manual-UK.pdf

Since it has the "Pittway" branding, which makes it pretty old.

On the whole, tech support for this is going to be pretty difficult. Since you are in the UK that means that this system gets power from your main electrical grid in the house. Your first step is to determine if you even have primary power.

The odds are pretty even that you will need to start over with a newer system, though.

 

Yes I am in the UK. Is there a UK forum I should Use?

like you say it sounds like I may have to start again. Can the exiting wiring be used or does it all need to be redone?

my friend is an electrician so I will see if he can work out if the alarm is getting power.

I may also get an alarm engineer to check it out too.

tha is for your help so far. I will report back if we can confirm power is there.

 

The existing wiring infrastructure will work just fine. Alarm contacts are essentially fancy switches, so they will work on any system.

There's not really a UK version of this forum, but it helps to know we are dealing with overseas models, because things like the Honeywell (who absorbed Ademco) websites have regional specific tech support databases; so it takes extra steps to find specs and info on such hardware.

Your first bet is to find out if this even has power going to it. There are several power fuses on the board that can fail, which should be on the low voltage (thus safe) side of the transformer. I know that UK mains voltages aren't to be trifled with, unless you know what you are doing...

 

That was the same manual I found. Close but not exact.

 

Hi, I have the exact same Alarm system and am also wanting to know the make/model. Did you ever find out from your electrician friend?

Thanks

 

FYI I think I've found the make/model. It's an Ademco Accord 8. Just google it for manuals etc - I can't seem to find an exact manual for it but the is one for the Accord xPC which seems to do the job.

HTH

 

It's been nearly a year, so the original poster probably isn't on the forum, anymore.

In essence, it's a long discontinued model, and there is very limited technical support for it. The infrastructure wiring in you home is probably is decent condition, and will support a current generation wired system.