Tons of questions - DSC Alarm, whole home power protection, etc

[eggzlot]

So backstory:

- I have an older DSC alarm with an IT-100 module for C4 connection.  Any decent storm and the IT-100 fries.  I go through 1-2 a year, always have a back up in the house.  I have changed the surge bar out that is hooked up to my alarm panel, seems to make no difference

- about 2 months ago I had my electrician finally install a whole home Eaton surge protector/suppressor or whatever

Yesterday/Today:

- we have a storm yesterday, brief, but when I went to do something where the alarm would be automated, didnt work, and I realized the IT100 must be fried so I said whatever I’ll put the new one in tomorrow morning

- this morning I went to pull out the IT100 in storage to install and when i went to my basement storage room to get the supplies I noticed a small but obvious puddle in the room. Odd but there are some water pipes in the room so now I am on the hunt for a leak.  After I cleaned up the puddle, I saw two more small drips come back, so I am leaning towards a pipe issue   And I have a hard wired water bug in this room but the water bug is all of 3’ maybe from this puddle….

- I install the new IT100 and I check the connection on the C4 app, it works, but I see a zone is open.  And it’s that zone mentioned above - the water bug in that back room where I saw a puddle.  WTF….

Why didnt I get notified?  Here is where my head hurts…ok if the It100 was fried, shouldn’t central monitoring have called me (I never lost power), shouldn’t the DSC panel itself went off with the local alarm?   I have some automation in the house with text notifications and those never happened but I can say it’s because the IT100 fried.  And if this happened, it was almost 24 hours ago and the zone is still open but the bug itself is bone dry.  How do I clear the message?  Could the storm have fried the bug too?  If so, still no clue why I never got notified from central monitoring or the in house alarm horn.

so now I dont know if this puddle was larger at some point, though I dont see any obvious signs of water damage.  I got a stuck notification in my panel, and wondering why the alarm never went off.  

I am going to call my electrician about the whole home protection and my alarm guy about this issue, but I gotta wait til Monday and my mind doesnt settle easily - so figuring someone on here may have some clues?

[South Africa C4 user]

I don’t have any answers for you but I do feel your pain!

I have to replace my IT100 module between one and two times a year due to “storm damage”.  I have tried everything to get rid of the problem and failed.  I have 4 or 5 spares in the garage and have gone through 15 or 20 in the last 10 years,  

What scared me more was that my last storm damage was last October and it fried my Pentair IntellTouch panel as well as 2 of my swimming pool pump drivers as well as the IT100 so that was an expensive lightning strike.  I am now very nervous about the next one!

I have even considered a lightning conductor but they are ugly and I am not sure if it will help!

[c4toys]

The zone type can be set to many different scenario. It should prevent you from arming if the zone was open. It could be set to auto bypass? You need to ask your alarm contractor that programmed it as to what zone type it is set to. and No it cant call the plumber from you!

[SpencerT]

Have you considered adding some ferrite toroid chokes?

I've had positive results around sensitive LV and Amateur Radio gear and lightning strikes (not to mention rf interference prevention). 

I understand it's a testy subject especially around lightning protection, just throwing it out as an option.

[eggzlot]

15 hours ago, c4toys said:

The zone type can be set to many different scenario. It should prevent you from arming if the zone was open. It could be set to auto bypass? You need to ask your alarm contractor that programmed it as to what zone type it is set to. and No it cant call the plumber from you!

Well thru IFTT I could have it call my plumber!

[eggzlot]

13 hours ago, SpencerT said:

Have you considered adding some ferrite toroid chokes?

I've had positive results around sensitive LV and Amateur Radio gear and lightning strikes (not to mention rf interference prevention). 

I understand it's a testy subject especially around lightning protection, just throwing it out as an option.

Testy as in it may not work?  A bunch of them are 7 bux on Amazon so not much to lose?

[South Africa C4 user]

20 minutes ago, eggzlot said:

Testy as in it may not work?  A bunch of them are 7 bux on Amazon so not much to lose?

I’ve tried with no luck.  I don’t think there is a downside to trying though.  The IT100s usually come with one in the box 

[cdcllc]

I'm not positive what C4 alarm system interface I have, but in over 6 years, I've not had a surge-related hardware problem in either my security enclosure, or computer rack (HUGE knock on wood).  I'm fortunate that the security system enclosure and computer rack are co-located and on the same dedicated GFI circuit.  In the rack, I have a Wattbox 1100-8 UPS and Audio Solutions PDU's.  I also have 2 whole house surge protectors, 1 for each panel.  I'm probably also benefiting from having built the house in a new development, so my "last mile" utility infrastructure is relatively new (probably!).

But I still live in southwest Florida so we have several brown-outs, power outages per year.  I have a Generac whole-house generator and we switch to generator power 1-2 times per year.

I ran an IT support desk for many years that included many Florida facilities and poor power quality was the number 1 cause of hardware problems.  A key diagnostic process was putting a power monitor on the circuit which we applied after repeated, unexplained hardware failures.  At home, I use a PowerTronics Probe 100 power line monitor when I think I might have an issue.  At work, when power issues were identified, it usually resulted in getting an electrician involved to reconfigure other equipment in the facility to other circuits, or just installing a new dedicated circuit (preferred solution) to power the computer equipment.  The monitor is about $175US; I'm not sure what an IT100 board goes for.  It also sounds like the IT100 may have some weak components which make it failure prone - which may or may not be power quality related.

This may be overkill for many, and I'm not sure if any of this is, or would be helpful for your situation, but thought I'd relay a setup that in least this one instance, is working well.

[South Africa C4 user]

8 minutes ago, cdcllc said:

I'm not positive what C4 alarm system interface I have, but in over 6 years, I've not had a surge-related hardware problem in either my security enclosure, or computer rack (HUGE knock on wood).  I'm fortunate that the security system enclosure and computer rack are co-located and on the same dedicated GFI circuit.  In the rack, I have a Wattbox 1100-8 UPS and Audio Solutions PDU's.  I also have 2 whole house surge protectors, 1 for each panel.  I'm probably also benefiting from having built the house in a new development, so my "last mile" utility infrastructure is relatively new (probably!).

But I still live in southwest Florida so we have several brown-outs, power outages per year.  I have a Generac whole-house generator and we switch to generator power 1-2 times per year.

I ran an IT support desk for many years that included many Florida facilities and poor power quality was the number 1 cause of hardware problems.  A key diagnostic process was putting a power monitor on the circuit which we applied after repeated, unexplained hardware failures.  At home, I use a PowerTronics Probe 100 power line monitor when I think I might have an issue.  At work, when power issues were identified, it usually resulted in getting an electrician involved to reconfigure other equipment in the facility to other circuits, or just installing a new dedicated circuit (preferred solution) to power the computer equipment.  The monitor is about $175US; I'm not sure what an IT100 board goes for.  It also sounds like the IT100 may have some weak components which make it failure prone - which may or may not be power quality related.

This may be overkill for many, and I'm not sure if any of this is, or would be helpful for your situation, but thought I'd relay a setup that in least this one instance, is working well.

Thanks! I don’t think poor power is my problem.  We have terrible power in South Africa and all of my equipment is behind surge protection and on good UPSs.  The IT100 only ever give an issue after a massive electrical storm.

[eggzlot]

22 hours ago, cdcllc said:

I'm not positive what C4 alarm system interface I have, but in over 6 years, I've not had a surge-related hardware problem in either my security enclosure, or computer rack (HUGE knock on wood).  I'm fortunate that the security system enclosure and computer rack are co-located and on the same dedicated GFI circuit.  In the rack, I have a Wattbox 1100-8 UPS and Audio Solutions PDU's.  I also have 2 whole house surge protectors, 1 for each panel.  I'm probably also benefiting from having built the house in a new development, so my "last mile" utility infrastructure is relatively new (probably!).

But I still live in southwest Florida so we have several brown-outs, power outages per year.  I have a Generac whole-house generator and we switch to generator power 1-2 times per year.

I ran an IT support desk for many years that included many Florida facilities and poor power quality was the number 1 cause of hardware problems.  A key diagnostic process was putting a power monitor on the circuit which we applied after repeated, unexplained hardware failures.  At home, I use a PowerTronics Probe 100 power line monitor when I think I might have an issue.  At work, when power issues were identified, it usually resulted in getting an electrician involved to reconfigure other equipment in the facility to other circuits, or just installing a new dedicated circuit (preferred solution) to power the computer equipment.  The monitor is about $175US; I'm not sure what an IT100 board goes for.  It also sounds like the IT100 may have some weak components which make it failure prone - which may or may not be power quality related.

This may be overkill for many, and I'm not sure if any of this is, or would be helpful for your situation, but thought I'd relay a setup that in least this one instance, is working well.

I can get an IT100 on ebay new for about $45 with shipping.  I'll look into some of what you suggested, some I understand, some is over my head to be honest but I also havent finished my coffee yet for the morning.  Appreciate the advice though.

In general, I have 95% of all of my electronics on some sort of surge/power conditioner including my alarm panel (in fact just put a new one in recently to ensure it was "fresh")