Best panel for extra zone like fire zone

Irish Steve

The alarm here came out of the ark, and as a result of windows being changed, I'm looking at upgrading the panel. The old panel is a vista 5, so effectively 4 alarm zones and a fire zone, 2 panic attacks, and the normal internal and external sounders and SABB. and with very little maintenance it's worked very well for close on 30 years, so I can't complain. I did the original install, so I have a reasonable idea of what's going on, and I will ideally be doing my own update, as what I have here is a bit non standard.

Now, I'm wanting to move on a bit, there's no future at all in the vista 5 panel although I could still use it, the new PVC windows have all been modified before install so that they can still provide perimeter protection on the openings and by vibration detectors, all wired, albeit at the moment using the old zone wiring.

I can modify the zone wiring, the house is dormer bungalow, so I can get to the wiring in the roof void to split the zones, which will give me better granularity if an alarm condition is detected, I like the idea of the keypad display telling me that the dining room has an issue when we go to set the panel, rather than just getting A2 on the display, finding which actual window is giving the alarm means going searching the house.

The wrinkle is that I'd like an additional active at all times zone, which would be used via a float switch to detect and notifiy us of potential flood issues, an external sump is being put in to allow for a pump to deal with surcharge flood water, and ideally, I'd like to put a float switch in the sump that will trigger a zone, like a fire zone, and activate an alarm condition, so that if the pump has failed for some reason, and the water level has come above the set point, we get to know about it while there's still time to take action to prevent flooding.

There are probably ways to do this using something like a Shelly smart switch, but my thinking is that if this is tied in with the alarm, it's effectively backed up by the alarm battery, so not vulnerable to power disruptions and the like, and ideally, I can also get the relevant alarm trigger to send me an alert on smartphone, which will mean we get to know about an issue even if we're not at home.

So, what are the options? I get the impression that Ajax are not quite there yet with wired panels, and I don't want to spend a fortune on wireless sensors, there's 9 windows and 4 doors on the ground floor, and 11 velux windows in the dormer, 3 doors and a window on the garage, and wireless sensors for that lot will be seriously expensive.

From a quick look at the details, something like the HKC 10270 should be able to do what I want, the issue is the additional flood zone, I don't know if the HKC can differentiate that out from the fire zone or not. If it can't, I'm going to have to look at a better way to do what I want.

One way may be to put the float switch on a separate zone on the panel but then use the tamper loop for the switch, on the basis that if it activates, that should trigger the alarm even if it's unset, but I'm not sure if that's valid for the newer generations of HKC.

Thoughts or comments appreciated

Thanks

Steve

altor

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058271065/best-panel-for-extra-zone-like-fire-zone

You could do as above once the device your using is a N/C that goes open when activated or add a relay to do same.

The zone could then be setup as a 24hr zone so is always on and activates once triggered.

Irish Steve

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119861207#Comment_119861207

Perfect, and many thanks, the supposed tech information on the HKC site is little more than a glorified sales brochure, so that sort of level of information just isn't there.

Bit of work to do before I'm ready for that, but didn't want to start it until I knew it was going to be possible.

Thanks