Replacing alarm bell box

[handychick]

Hi folks,

Im currently getting the outside of my house painted and as a result have begun to think about replacing the existing alarm bell box that is on the side of my house.
It is almost falling off and has created a rusty streak down the wall as it is almost completely falling apart. It most certainly doesnt work anymore although it did a few years back so Im hopeful that the wiring is good and its just the box that is dead.


So my question is,

Are these boxes designed to some standard by which I can expect to be able to replace the existing lump of rust with a new shiny box and hope that the wiring will match up fairly well.

I assume there will be some form of power supplied to the box which will, I guess, contain a rectifier to charge a battery with DC and some form of control wiring to provide an alarm signal. Is this a fair assumption.

Im fine with electricals but am conscious that there is no obvious on off switch to isolate the alarm box and Im guessing itll have mains voltage fed to it somewhere.

Any advice gratefully received.

thanks,

Paula

 

[yaleguy3]

You will have usually a four wire feed into the bell box.
a positive and negative power feed and two tamper wires making the tamper circuit.

In order to swap your bellbox you need to.
1. Isolate your fused spur to the control panel therefore isolating the mains feed before opening the panel. Also remove the black spade connector from the back up battery
2.remove the quickblow fuse before removing the bellbox and potentially touching the wires.
3. look at the colours of wires used in the control panel to feed power to the bellbox noting the colours used for the +ve feed and the tamper circuit.
4. Mount your bellbox backplate feeding through the 4 core wire and connecting to the correct terminals as defined previously
5. Replace cover
6 Replace fuse - recconect spade terminal and close panel
7 power up the fused spur
8 At this stage the alarm will probably sound or be locked out so you need to Reset panel to idle status using engineer code if necessary.

If you are unsure of stage 8 then I suggest getting an engineer in to fit the bell box and have the control panel battery checked at the same time as they wear out

 

[handychick]

Thanks for the detailed reply, the control panel is an optima 6 zone and ive found the rcd that isolates it so it would seem its fairly straightforward.

Im amazed at the size of the bell boxes that are for sale now.

Seems like they dont even do bellboxes the size of the things thats currently on the side of my house anymore. Its about the size of a small suitcase.

The one I have bought is this http://www.sdfirealarms.co.uk/shop/reson8intruderalarmbellbox-p-375.html and is a much neater solution.

thanks again,

Paula

 

[joe-90]

There should be five wires not four. They do things different in Algeria.

 

[Europlex]

There should be five wires not four. They do things different in Algeria.

 

[yaleguy3]

Whoops my bad.

Forgot about the trigger for the bell and strobe.

yes 2 wires for the +ve and -ve 12v 2 for the tamper and either a shared wire for bell and strobe trigger or one wire for both.

Your siren can be set to be self timed which will stop any problems with noise pollution.

The other guys on the thread could also help as well if they were so minded.

 

[joe-90]

All sirens, by law, are timed to cut off.

 

[yaleguy3]

All sirens, by law, are timed to cut off.

Her existing Optima panel may be pre legislation so the option to have the panel self time feature activated may be useful.

 

[mryoung]

All sirens, by law, are timed to cut off.

Her existing Optima panel may be pre legislation so the option to have the panel self time feature activated may be useful.

Not quite sure what you mean by that yaleguy, but all modern sab's have their own cut-off timers regardless of the panels timer

 

[oasistechnical]

all ADE optima panels have a built in timer to cut the bell off at 20 mins (programmable)

but as everyone knows (engineer wise) all external sirens have a cut off time fitted as standard.

panel connections are easy;
T Tamper return
A 0 Volt (- hold off)
D + volt (+ hold off)
B - bell / siren trigger
stb + no connection (on new siren box)
Stb - strobe - connection

hope this helps

john

 

[oasistechnical]

also change that battery in the control panel;

also remember DISCONNECT THE MAINS FROM THE PANEL BEFORE OPENING IT UP,

ELECTRICITY HAS THE BAD HABIT OF BITING YOU !!!!!!

john

 

[handychick]

Hey folks,

Ok I got the old box off and got the new box mounted.

A couple of problems though

The box I took off had its own mains supply as it was one of those spinning claxon type things. It almost crumbed under the pliers as it was so rusty.
So there were 7 wires going to it
live, neutral and earth
2 wires for strobe
2 wires for bell

Now, the box I bought cant handle mains voltage and only needs 10-15v dc so I rewired the mains feed from the control panel so that it provides the +/- 12 V batt voltage and fed that up to the new sounder.

I then wired that in alongside the existing battery connection from the small internal sounder backup battery. Seems ok in principle but Im not convinced its right but anyway there was nowhere else that the DC feed could have gone on the little tag block.

So then I had to try and work out where the other wires should go. The instructions seem fairly clear and have the B,A,T, D wires listed but the problem is, on the control panel, the existing wiring has bell (which is red and black) and strobe (which is green and white) but the box on the outside of the house has the following connections..

battery +
battery -
RTN -
Hold Off +
Hold Off -
trig -
stb -

Further complicating the picture, on the control box, The two wires for the bell connection are B and D and the A and T wire positions are connected via a wire loop.

I would post up some pictures but my camera is a bit gash and isnt focusing well on the kind of close ups I would need to use to see any useful detail.

So I guess the first of my many questions is what does the B,T,A and D mean. I could remove the loop and wire up like for like with another connection for strobe minus as I have six cores available going up from the control box to the sounder. Is this what folks would recommend.

thanks in advance,

Paula

 

[joe-90]

The terminals are summarised as follows:
T - -Ve tamper return
A - -Ve supply (0V)
D - +Ve supply (12V)
B- -Ve Sounder trigger


The A and D are the 'hold off' terminals.

The wire link is what you would do if you didn't want to involve a tamper switch.

 

[handychick]

doh,

i just saw that explanation further up in the thread as well...

thanks joe...

I think Im gonna remove the connection between the batteries that I put in as the hold off seems to pass the 12V and just wrap that old mains wire up so ...... once the storm passes tomorrow ill go back up the ladder and wire up BATD like for like and a single wire for strobe.

It kinda makes more sense now sitting with a glass of wine rather than up at the top of a ladder scratching my head ..

thanks again,

Paula