Connecting smoke & carbon monoxide alarm to HKC alarm

jonnybravo wrote: »

We are currently starting to re-wire our house.

We are looking to connect our EI smoke, heat and carbon monoxide alarms to our HKC security alarm. From reading about it I think we just need a relay base (https://www.eielectronics.ie/products/accessories/relai/ei128rbu-relay-base/) under the normal EI alams. And then get the electrician to connect this to the alarm panel & the alarm perso will set this up as a seperate zone? Does it need to be connected using alarm cable? Anything else I am missing.


Jonny

You are correct, that is indeed the module you need. Get your electrician to wire it with whatever he feels appropriate and your alarm guy can connect and program the system as necessary.

jonnybravo wrote: »

Does anyone know if connecting the smoke alarm / carbon monoxide alarm to a HKC alarm is very complicated. Have spoken to 3 alarm people and 2 have never done and said it couldn't be done...

Also are they connected individually as a zone to the alarm or are all the smoke alarms hooked up as one alarm zone and carbon monoxide as another zone?


Jonny

I am surprised that 3 different alarm companies told you it cannot be done, because it can be done and this I know because we only did one last week on a domestic system using EI detectors with that exact same module you linked to earlier.


All the units should be EI models, they have their own interconnection function which goes from device to device and then onto the interface module.


The interface module is connected to a zone in your alarm panel which shoud be programmed as Fire.


Therefore it is constantly active regardless of whether the alarm system is armed or not.

jonnybravo wrote: »

Thanks for confirming. So you only need one relay base for all your fire alarms and then connect this one relay base to the intruder alarm? And then interconnect all other fire alarms to this one relay base or just connect the fire alarms in a chain? Presume all interconnections and back to the alarm panel use core 6 alarm wire.

No problem, ok as far as I know when electricians are fitting and wiring up EI detectors and indeed other manufacturers ones, they have to interconnect them to one another, the purpose being that if one detector detects smoke etc, that it will convey this to the other detectors and they will also sound.


So your relay base reacts when that interconnect line is engaged by one of the detectors.


Therefore your existing detectors should be all linked together as they are, so all that is necessary is fitting the relay unit and then connecting that unit to a zone in your alarm panel and programming same for FIRE.

looking at wiring up swell. we currently have 2 ei100r wired in and im planning on adding a third. only issue is nowhere supplies these detectors with built in relays anymore. has anyone come across something similar, even one with no built in sounder and just reports back to the panel ( must have a relay installed). I see the ei options for the mains powered ones with the additional relay add on. but just seems messy. any help would be appreciated!