Practice Inspection – Amco Alarms

Before we performed any service-level work on the system, we had to disconnect the power. We went back to the electrical room, removed the protective fire alarm lock from Breaker 10 on the main electrical panel, and killed the power. Then, we disconnected the batteries from the system. For something this simple, we’d normally just pull the wires off the NAC, but Amendoa was watching. She handed us a lockout hasp that she had in her pocket. I could see Prissy beginning to get frustrated.


24 is less than 50.

Yes, but there's 120 in the can.

Amendoa took out her tablet again and started typing. I grabbed the four-foot ladder, while Prissy grabbed a spare Xentex XHG from the shelf. I unscrewed the broken device from the wall, and whipped out the OmniMeter to ensure that there was no voltage on the circuit. Then I stepped down from the ladder with the horn/strobe hanging by the wires, because EXIT observed the “belt buckle rule”, rather than the “don’t use the top step” rule when it came to ladders.

I came back with a six-footer. Prissy handed me the new horn/strobe, and threw the old one in the deficiency bin. I hooked everything up, and screwed the device into the dual-gang backbox. I collapsed the ladder and hung it back on the hook. It was time to power up the panel.


I'll go reconnect the batteries!

Nope. You can fry the panel that way. AC always comes first.

I politely asked Amendoa for the key to unlock the hasp, but we’d been fooled again. We should have ensured that we had the key before locking it. Sometimes, perps will try to interfere with an investigation with tricks like this. Was all of this really necessary?


I'll let you think about it. Have you ever had a maintenance guy mysteriously lose the keys? Or been given an excuse why so-and-so's apartment couldn't be inspected? It can't be helped when they're the customer. But they're not the customer anymore - we are.

That was actually a fair point. A private inspector’s job is to diagnose, not to enforce. That was the job of the authority having jurisdiction (AHJ) – in this case, EXIT. Once Amendoa was sure we understood, she unlocked the breaker for us and flipped it back on.

Once the panel was finished initializing, Prissy reconnected the batteries. The system was back to normal, and it was time to make some noise. I handed Prissy a pair of earmuffs.


Sparky, I don't-

(I know, just wear them so there's less to explain.)

We performed a coin toss to decide whether it would be Alan or Prissy who would pull the alarm.


Heads. Looks like it's you, Detective.

Please, call me Alan. Now, without further ado...
Fire alarm, activate! *click!*

The Symptom Senser UmbrAlert horn/strobes fired off in synchronized code 3. They were set to the electromechanical tone, which sounded just like a sports whistle. Thankfully, they were on low volume. All of the horns and strobes appeared to be working in this area. Alan reset the pull station with the key he brought from home.

Symptom Senser V1224MC “UmbrAlert” horn/strobe.
This later model could operate on either 12 or 24 VDC,
and had multiple brightness settings.
The fire alarm as heard from the office area.

We peeked into the garage. The XHG’s blared a deeper, unsynchronized code 3 tone. They only had one volume setting – excruciating. Ashton had just finished checking all four of them, so Prissy and I headed back to the panel.

Xentex XHG-24-15/75WR
The fire alarm as heard from the garage. You can also hear the outdoor bell.

I thought XHG's were a quiet buzzer! That sounds like a Commando III!

You're thinking of the older analog version! Or maybe the GMX, but that's mechanical! There's a guy who did a whole video series about them!

I poked my head out the door to get a good glimpse of that exterior bell. It was clanging loudly enough that people from the neighboring factories were starting to pop their heads out.

Xentex XB10-24 vibrating bell

We silenced the panel, and the signals cut out. We reset twice for good measure, though that was only ever necessary on Ashton’s “favorite” panels – the Synthex 4100 and 4020.


Dear merciful heavens...

Phew... That was loud. It's not a deficiency, but I recommend reserving that bell for waterflow alarms. Or switching to a horn/strobe if you wanna keep it as a general alarm.

Thank you for your feedback. I'll look into installing a control module.
Now, say... Did you happen to reenable the city box for that last alarm?

Amendoa had just embarrassed herself. She returned the city box to normal operation and told us to hit it again, just for a split second. She then called in to the receiving station, which had just received an alarm from our address. Once the box had finished its cycle, she rewound the mechanism and locked it back up. She spent the next couple minutes tabulating the results of her audit.


Looks like you passed, but you were one point away from "needs improvement".

(Psst! She says the same thing to me...)