I was working with a Bosch G series panel. Its their standard combo burg/fire panel. The batteries were old and swollen, that's why I was there. I pulled the batteries. The panel is designed to handle two 7 AH 12 VDC batteries in parallel. I hooked up positive and negative on the first battery fine. Then I hooked up the Negative terminal on the 2nd battery, then went to hook up the positive terminal...Pop!! The biggest Arc flash off a battery I have even seen
Needless to say, the panel shut down, powered back up and now the Zonex (data loop for expander modules) is bad!!!! Crap i just killed a fire panel!!!!
After all that I tried the batteries again, hooked them up without incident!!!!!! That is frustrating!!!
Besides the fact that two auxillary devices were hooked to the battery + terminal and panel - (common) what happened????
I understand that those other devices shouldn't have been on there but they had been operating fine for years like this. I didn't check what the battery terminals had on them before I changed the batteries (nothing else should be on there!!!) The wiring is messy anyway, I didn't put it in and the customer isn't interested in paying to having it neatened up.
After some looking around I found the two devices that were attached to the battery terminals for power were now ground faulted. They are mounted in the can with the panel and are not touching the can. The boards themselves are cooked not the devices attached to it.
I surmise that a surge( or electrostatic discharge maybe?) with the arc blew the main panel's data loop. I have never seen anything like this before. Oh and I did NOT reverse the polarity of the battery when hooking it up.
of course the company I work for looks like crap in the eyes of the customer for frying a panel, but I know I did nothing willingly wrong.
Here comes the brown stuff rolling down hill!!
Needless to say, the panel shut down, powered back up and now the Zonex (data loop for expander modules) is bad!!!! Crap i just killed a fire panel!!!!
After all that I tried the batteries again, hooked them up without incident!!!!!! That is frustrating!!!
Besides the fact that two auxillary devices were hooked to the battery + terminal and panel - (common) what happened????
I understand that those other devices shouldn't have been on there but they had been operating fine for years like this. I didn't check what the battery terminals had on them before I changed the batteries (nothing else should be on there!!!) The wiring is messy anyway, I didn't put it in and the customer isn't interested in paying to having it neatened up.
After some looking around I found the two devices that were attached to the battery terminals for power were now ground faulted. They are mounted in the can with the panel and are not touching the can. The boards themselves are cooked not the devices attached to it.
I surmise that a surge( or electrostatic discharge maybe?) with the arc blew the main panel's data loop. I have never seen anything like this before. Oh and I did NOT reverse the polarity of the battery when hooking it up.
of course the company I work for looks like crap in the eyes of the customer for frying a panel, but I know I did nothing willingly wrong.
Here comes the brown stuff rolling down hill!!
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