Surge protection and Firelite panels damaged in Florida

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I recently was asked to do work in South Florida, and have not seem storm damage like this, noticed panel after panel damaged after lightning storms, Most panels are small MS9200 panels with Diteck surges.

Most panels show a GF trouble with all wires removed, and most of the surges are not open or shorted to ground, One customer stated he replaced the same panel 3x's in 6 days.

Any thoughts on what would be my best approrch to fix and cut back on these probles, 1 tech suggested changing the screws on the panel to plastic with washers, I told him that change was not a option

thanks
 

gadfly56

Senior Member
Location
New Jersey
Occupation
Professional Engineer, Fire & Life Safety
I recently was asked to do work in South Florida, and have not seem storm damage like this, noticed panel after panel damaged after lightning storms, Most panels are small MS9200 panels with Diteck surges.

Most panels show a GF trouble with all wires removed, and most of the surges are not open or shorted to ground, One customer stated he replaced the same panel 3x's in 6 days.

Any thoughts on what would be my best approrch to fix and cut back on these probles, 1 tech suggested changing the screws on the panel to plastic with washers, I told him that change was not a option

thanks

Put surge protection at the power panel, and maybe try those ferrite rings to choke any induced voltage on the SLC, 485 bus, or NAC's. The NAC's might get grumpy if the strobes are sync'd from the panel itself, so just be aware.
 
thanks

thanks

I will give the Ferrite rings a try on the SLC, after reviewing notes it seems the damage is coming in from the Sprinkler system, On 4 of the 6 bldgs , they replaced the mmf-301 monitor modules on backflows or the F/S. I did notice from the picture they are not using the ground wire on the surges also
 

MichaelGP3

Senior Member
Location
San Francisco bay area
Occupation
Fire Alarm Technician
Also look into surge suppression on any connected phone lines.

Put surge protection at the power panel, and maybe try those ferrite rings to choke any induced voltage on the SLC, 485 bus, or NAC's. ......

Also use ferrite cores (cylindrical) on phone cords inside the MS9200. The one's I'm thinking about are a little larger than a roll of quarters in diameter & @ half as long.
 

del91574

Member
Location
ct
I did notice from the picture they are not using the ground wire on the surges also

Now there's your problem :lol: Don't think they work too well without them, not to mention code requirements. I'd start by fixing the stuff not installed I/A/W the manufacturer's instructions then replace the panels because they weren't installed correctly to start with rather than the idea to field modify the panel and void the listings.
 

gadfly56

Senior Member
Location
New Jersey
Occupation
Professional Engineer, Fire & Life Safety
Now there's your problem :lol: Don't think they work too well without them, not to mention code requirements. I'd start by fixing the stuff not installed I/A/W the manufacturer's instructions then replace the panels because they weren't installed correctly to start with rather than the idea to field modify the panel and void the listings.

Say what? You don't mean the ferrite rings, do you? 'Cause all you do is loop the incoming wire around the ring. No modifying here. But yeah, grounding the surge protector might help a wee bit.
 
Made it to 1 job site today

Made it to 1 job site today

Boy what a mess, Looks like the original design was 10 buildings each with a DACT,but was changed to a addressable panel in the club house and modules to monitor each building.
So SLC arrives at each building has a surge that feeds 3 module to monitor panel at building and a seperate module for flow stuffed in a 6x6x6 box.
Some grounds are not used and some run to the tele ground block about 10ft away. According to Ditek rep, ground wire should be shorter then wires to protected devices.

at main panel MS9200 no ground used on slc and surge to terminal at panel is about 2 inchs stuffed above motherboard.

I know what to do to clean up with your help and Ditek reps help
 

del91574

Member
Location
ct
Say what? You don't mean the ferrite rings, do you? 'Cause all you do is loop the incoming wire around the ring. No modifying here. But yeah, grounding the surge protector might help a wee bit.

The OP mentioned someone suggesting isolating the panel with plastic screws/washers, which will void the UL listing on the panel (field modified) and the issue I was referencing, the surges lacked that green wire being connected to EG. Whole setup sounds like it's not up to code (SLC being protected where it enters/leaves building) as well as not being installed I/A/W the manufacturer's specs.

Ferrite cores are suggested in the tech docs for Notifier, so I'm sure Fire-lite has them listed as well.

I used to work tech support for Notifier Integrated Systems....huge networked installs of panels, with the smallest being bigger than Fire-Lite's largest unit. :)
 
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