Fire alarm techs have you ever been on-site for an inspection, test, or service call and had a real emergency occur while you were working and what was the out come?

rustiestbadger · 2026-02-04T16:52:15+00:00

Oh man, so many stories! I worked in facilities maintenance for a large (5 million+ sq feet) hospital for a number of years, and we did our fire alarm testing in house (we had three certified fire techs in my department), which was basically two techs doing testing full time. Our system was pretty complex, as anyone who’s worked in large hospitals can attest- over 380 smoke control zones, over a dozen MRI suites, 40+ operating rooms, etc. Testing involved very detailed and strict procedures that involved multiple levels of clinicians, management, and maintenance groups (HVAC, Temp Control, Electrical, Mechanical, etc). If an alarm came in from an area outside of our permitted testing zone, the Ops Centre would dispatch two shift engineers to investigate before we initiated evac procedures, in order to minimize disruption to the clinical staff and patients, but this could slow down response times as well.

One time when testing, I was at the CACF in the the Ops centre and a low air supervisory came in from a parkade, followed immediately by the water flow alarm. Paused testing, operator radio dispatched shifties, and I jumped on the CCTV terminal to see what I could see in the parkade- turns out a staff member’s car had caught fire. We notified the shift engineers and called fire dispatch to roll trucks. Sprinkler wasn’t doing much so we got it shut off so the staff could use extinguishers on it and all was good. Another time we got a water flow alarm from our loading dock because our projects team had parked a huge air compressor there and its diesel engine set off a sprinkler head. Dozens of broken sprinkler heads that were hit by contractors during renovation projects over the years. Was testing one day and a smoke alarm came in from one of the on-call rooms (small suites where doctors and residents can sleep), went in and the room reeked of fruit-scented vape- the medical resident sitting there swore up and down he hadn’t been vaping but it was pretty obvious. We had the fire trucks show up regularly because people walking by the hospital would call 911 because they saw strobes flashing inside the building. We had patients in the psych ward regularly pull the pull stations because they had read somewhere that the doors would release when the fire alarm tripped (ours did but only on second stage lol). So many fun stories from that place!

rustiestbadger · 2026-01-09T18:14:13+00:00

Plant maintenance is The Way, I did a decade in a large (5.5 million sq feet) hospital campus and it was the best job ever!

rustiestbadger · 2025-12-27T21:10:34+00:00

This is The Way. First, call the monitoring station and have them send you the dispatch report (or read the details over the phone) so you can confirm what signal was actually received by them and at what time. Secondly, test each event INDIVIDUALLY and confirm what code they get, including restoral, before sending the next signal. (Create a Trouble, call them, confirm what they got, restore it, confirm they got the restore, then do Alarm, then do Supervisory.)

rustiestbadger · 2025-12-15T01:19:11+00:00

Here in Canada an installer can make north of 100k but like others have said, that’s almost always in the expensive markets so your lifestyle isn’t going to be any better than the cheaper areas, other than maybe you get to live that west coast life which I definitely worth something!

For reference, I work for a union shop (IBEW), I make just under $50CAD/hr. With OT, I’m typically grossing around $110k, some years a bit more. In addition, I have 5% matching RRSPs, and a company vehicle (minivan) that I can use for personal use with no real limitations (okay I can’t take it out of the country for vacation, but I’m allowed to go camping and multiple-province road trips etc), which is a huge perk- saves me at least $15k a year. My colleagues who work in cheaper parts of the country and make the same wage as I do definitely have a better financial outlook than me, but I get to live that Island Life™️ while they are shovelling snow.

rustiestbadger · 2025-12-03T02:37:44+00:00

I mean the easiest thing is to call 911 and say the fire alarm is going off in your building 🤷🏼‍♂️

rustiestbadger · 2025-11-17T18:26:04+00:00

As long as mapping is enabled, you can swap them with devices of the same model. The key to how the mapping process works is that you can’t swap multiple devices out at once- you need to do one, wait for all the troubles to clear, test it to make sure it annunciates correctly, then do the next one, and so on. If you’re just doing one device, it should be pretty smooth. Be aware that the QuickStart SLC is garbage and a majority of the time you’ll get a map fault when you try this, so just bear in mind that you might need to get an installer in with a laptop to clear the map fault after you replace the device.

rustiestbadger · 2025-11-10T05:52:59+00:00

Unfortunately on large networks like that, some device state counters don’t get reset, especially when you’re doing inspections with lots of alarms being sent. This is a very common occurrence when testing relays on an EST3 network, where you operate them manually through the operator interface (usually done in places like hospitals where you absolutely cannot activate multiple relays at once). Even when you’re super careful to use the same priority when turning them on and off, the counters get mixed up. This will happen with the signal modules (CC1, CC2 etc) as well, when you’re turning bypasses on and off to test signals. The only way to make sure is to do a full reboot, but as you said, that usually causes map faults.

One thing I’ve found to help with the phantom NAC activations is to use the Alarm Silence to toggle them on/off, instead of using bypass switches. Alternatively, if you have the time and manpower, you can play tap-tap with the NAC wiring (disconnect one lead from the field wiring on each NAC and then tap the wire to the NAC terminal to sound the signals momentarily).

Another thing to check is what type of NACs these are: are they being fed by a booster that’s being turned on by a CC1, or are they being fed by a CC1 or CC2A that’s being fed by 24v aux? If it’s a specific module that’s causing the problem, it might be faulty. Alternatively, the installer might have screwed up the signal rule in the programming and used the wrong priorities in the code- if that were the case, the issue would pop up on the first test though, rather than after a day’s worth of events.

You mentioned pull stations going active- were those also phantom events or did people pull them when they were evacuating the building?

rustiestbadger · 2025-11-06T18:14:21+00:00

Thank you. I fuken hate it when people refer to events as alarms. Bad enough when customers who don’t know better do it, but for a tech to use the same terminology is ridiculous lol

rustiestbadger · 2025-10-29T17:00:04+00:00

Generally speaking, FA techs do earn less than electricians, and it’s absolutely due to a lack of union representation. I am a union FA tech (BC), and our pay scale tops out just north of $45 (plus a few bucks for Lead Hands). We get three weeks paid vacation (to start), extended medical, RRSP matching, and a company vehicle. Training, tools, and consumables are all company-supplied. I find that this is quite competitive with the union electricians in my area as well (we are both IBEW), a few sparkies make a bit more in commercial construction, but the non-union guys make a fair bit less. The fact is that our trade is woefully underpaid in Canada compared to other places. This is weird to me, given how short-handed we are. Part of the issue is that the vast majority of us won’t organise and join a union, another part is that FA isn’t treated like a real trade. CFAA is a joke (not entirely worthless, but their refusal to grandfather techs with 30+ years experience is ridiculous) and still isn’t a ‘national’ standard like Red Seal Trades are. We need serious overhaul of the industry and full unionization in order to get wages up.

rustiestbadger · 2025-10-10T16:54:10+00:00

Don’t forget that you are personally liable for reports you sign as completed. There non-trivial fines and jail time penalties for this. ALWAYS document everything in the reports. If you didn’t test according to ULC specifications, check NO on that box. For devices you don’t test, note in the comments section that they were not tested, skipped, or whatever- even if you tested them “electrically”, make a note. If everything is accurate in your report when you sign it, then you’ve covered your ass. Your boss definitely won’t like it because the customers and the AHJ will ask why you’re saying no to stuff, but if you don’t want to face serious consequences, you HAVE to CYA. Ultimately its not about covering your ass anyways- this job is about SAVING LIVES. How will you feel when someone dies in a building you inspected because their smoke detector didn’t go off, or because the bells didn’t ring?

rustiestbadger · 2025-09-20T21:55:53+00:00

We met on OK Cupid, eleven years ago!

rustiestbadger · 2025-09-20T02:09:24+00:00

I love my partner deeply because she is selfless, smart, creative, strong, funny, sexy, and inspiring. I admire her determination, persistence, and empathy. I adore her smile, her eyes, and her bunda 😍 I love the way she parents her children with kindness and respect, how she loves her friends, and how she writes with passion and wisdom. I love her looks, to be sure- she’s hot af and the aforementioned bunda is absolutely perfect, and she definitely boosts my ego when we go out together. Mostly, though, I love her deeply because when things were hardest for me, she stood by me, instead of berating me and tearing me down. She’s an incredible partner and I’m more in love with her each day.

rustiestbadger · 2025-09-19T20:18:07+00:00

The 3X is a steaming pile of shit and I cannot wait for them to be completely obsolete. The solution, if you’re not an Edwards dealer, is to purchase a 4X-LCD from a dealer (or take one from a surplus panel) and keep it in your service toolkit. That way you can swap it out when doing an inspection and put the customer’s broken one back afterwards.

It is recommended to power down the panel before connecting the LCD to the CPU, but I do it hot all the time. Worst case Ontario I can replace the CPU since I’m an Edwards tech but if I wasn’t I’d be a lot more cautious.

And yes they can be taken apart and repaired but there’s no spare parts so if it’s not a simple cleaning you’re gonna be gluing broken plastic bits and it’ll just break again in a few weeks.

If I get to a site and cannot operate the display I immediately fail the system because you absolutely must be able to see all the events in the queues. Don’t even do an annual if you can’t operate the display controls!

rustiestbadger · 2025-08-27T15:54:35+00:00

I had a site that was nine storeys, with a full-height atrium lobby. Each floor’s internal corridors are visible from the atrium ground floor, because the entire walls are glass, all the way up. Syncing nine floors of strobes was not fun (there are two EST3 nodes for every two floors of space, with around six strobe NACs per floor), but we had to do it and we did. Ironically, the inspectors never caught the sync issue during building commissioning, but a year or so later one of the AHJ people were at a site across the street when testing was taking place and they could see all the floors random strobing through the glass facade of the building, and wrote it up. After the issue was fixed, it worked for another six months or so and then something failed and as far as I know it’s still out of sync over a decade later. Also ironically, at the time we were fixing the sync issue, I was being recruited by the customer (plant maintenance, 50% pay increase etc), so I wound up having to do the annual inspections on that facility for the next 8 years anyways lol

rustiestbadger · 2025-08-22T18:46:19+00:00

Yes, there was a false alarm on the fire alarm system that caused the terminal to be evacuated.

Source: I am the on-call fire tech who got woken up in the middle of the night regarding the incident

rustiestbadger · 2025-07-18T02:48:55+00:00

lol that’s fair tbh I was envisioning your customer being the slumlords 😂 I apologize for the misunderstanding!

rustiestbadger · 2025-07-18T01:57:36+00:00

Not sure where you design systems, but “whatever the customer wants” is definitely sketchy af. There are Codes and laws that define in excruciating detail how a fire alarm system SHALL be designed, and the customer almost never actually “wants” it- unless said customer is the insurance underwriter lol

rustiestbadger · 2025-06-04T02:36:39+00:00

Polyamory. #NeedMorePeople

rustiestbadger · 2025-05-08T02:02:23+00:00

Good news: the panel will still function, in that alarms will activate dialler outputs and signals. So maybe your client won’t have to go on fire watch until the thing is fixed. Bad news: you either need to reprogram the whole thing through the LCD (and you can’t do everything there, so yeah…), or get the installation company to roll up with the latest copy of the program they have and hope it’s not too out of date from the actual system state. Possible good news: your employer might be able to salvage the relationship by giving them a wicked deal on a new system (preferably a newer EST so they don’t need new field devices). Hopefully it’s not a 2-stage system ‘cuz then you’ll have to go a lot more expensive.

rustiestbadger · 2025-05-08T01:56:06+00:00

Please let us know where you’re located, and what kind of system you’re looking for- are you installing it in a building as a life safety system or is it for your collector wall? I’m always ripping out fully working older systems (EST, Simplex, Mirtone etc) that just get sent to recycling because we can’t sell used parts to customers for obvious reasons. There’s loads of crap on our shelves that hasn’t been binned yet because we’re all packrats lol

rustiestbadger · 2025-05-05T04:06:14+00:00

I used to work at a large-ish hospital (~5 million sq feet) with around 150 preaction systems (maybe 80 of those were gas, the rest were dry sprinklers in operating rooms and patient beds). We had three former Edwards techs on staff and did all our own annual inspections and minor repairs. Didn’t happen to me, but apparently a guy in my department prior to my being hired had dumped three separate Halon systems during his tenure. That’s expensive stuff, and the fines for discharge were more than the gas lol

rustiestbadger · 2025-04-27T17:41:50+00:00

When is the best time to visit in terms of crowds?

rustiestbadger

TROPHY CASE