The day I stopped trusting the default zone list on a Honeywell Vista panel

For years, I'd just take the default zone list from the manual and wire it up, thinking it was good enough. That changed after a job in a big house in Austin, where the owner wanted a ton of window sensors. I used the default list, and we ended up with a weird fault on zone 8 that took me half a day to trace. Turns out, the default list had a zone type that didn't match the actual sensor. Now, I spend the first 15 minutes on any panel, even a simple one, writing out my own zone list on paper before I touch a wire. I note the zone number, the type, and what it's for. It feels slow at first, but it has saved me so many callbacks. How many of you still run with the factory defaults, or do you make your own map too?

2 comments

2 Comments

ryan4946d ago

Had a similar thing happen with a Vista 20p in a townhouse... default list had a zone for a motion set to entry/exit delay. Took forever to figure out why the alarm wouldn't arm.

shanen546d ago

Remember when we all just trusted the default programming on those old DSC panels? I mean, I wired up a whole system once where the keypad beeped every 30 seconds for a "trouble" condition. Drove the homeowner nuts. Spent hours looking for a real fault before I realized the default had a zone set as "supervisory" for a sensor that didn't exist. Now I clear everything out and start from zero, even if it's just a basic eight zone job.