Make It Work - Hunting Ground Faults - Mobile
Make It Work - Hunting Ground Faults - Mobile
Make It Work - Hunting Ground Faults - Mobile
ISBN: 978-1-951415-05-1
doug@douglaskrantz.com
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Make It Work – Hunting Ground Faults
Dedication
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Table of Contents
Preface ........................................................... 8
What Causes a Ground Fault?....................... 11
General Ground Fault Causes .........................................12
When to Fix a Ground Fault .......................... 16
Ground Fault – Electrical Circuit ....................................17
Fire Alarm System Ground Fault Detector .... 20
Danger – Ground Fault ................................. 24
First Ground Fault – System Still Detects and Warns ....25
Second Ground Fault – Failure of System .....................26
Disconnecting the Ground Fault Detection Circuitry .....27
Friday Afternoon Repair ................................................29
Troubleshooting the Ground Fault While Not Using the
Ground Fault Light ........................................ 31
The Ground Fault Light Shows Something Is Wrong .......32
Troubleshooting Error – Unreliable Ground Fault Light 33
Troubleshooting Error – Light is Off but Ground Fault is
Still on the System.........................................................34
Troubleshooting Error - Ground Fault Disconnected but
Light Still On ..................................................................36
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Troubleshooting Error – Double “On” Indication ..........37
Troubleshooting Error – Multiple Ground Faults ..........41
Troubleshooting Error – False Positive Indication .........41
Troubleshooting Error – Delayed Turn-On/Turn-Off .....42
Unreliable Ground Fault Light .......................................44
Troubleshooting – Look at What the Panel is Looking At
..................................................................... 45
How the Panel Detects a Ground Fault ...........................46
Finding the Reference Voltage ......................................49
Floating Ground Voltage ...............................................56
Troubleshooting – Categorizing Ground Faults60
Threshold ......................................................................60
Categories .....................................................................62
Ground Fault Condition .................................................63
Ground Fault Type ..........................................................66
Hard Ground Fault ........................................................67
Soft Ground Fault............................................................71
Induced (Ghost) Ground Fault ........................................84
Source or Power – “Normal” Ground Fault versus
“Induced” Ground Fault ................................................86
Power from Outside the Fire Alarm System ..................87
Detecting an Induced Ground Fault ..............................89
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Many Types of Induced Ground Fault ...........................100
AC Current Crosstalk Inside Conduit ...........................101
Stray AC Voltage on Conduit Ground ..........................108
Speaker Circuits ..........................................................113
Radio Frequency EMI ..................................................119
The Hunt .................................................... 122
Give Notice if Notice is Needed...................................122
Guess-and-Verify.........................................................123
Divide-and-Conquer – Looking for Ground Faults .......124
Further Hunting Tips .....................................................128
Get the “Low Hanging Fruit” First ...............................128
Take Lots of Pictures ...................................................129
Disconnect the Panel to Troubleshoot ........................131
Check Addressable Missing Devices ............................132
When There Aren’t Any As-Builts ................................133
Figure Out How the Building is Wired .........................137
Check Supervision Voltage for Loop Being Worked On
....................................................................................139
Check for End of Line Resistor .....................................141
Turn On the Horns and Strobes...................................142
Find Out Wire Distance to the Ground Fault by Checking
Resistance-to-Ground .................................................143
Follow the Wire ...........................................................145
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Put the System Back Together after Taking It Apart ...147
CYA Paperwork............................................................148
References ................................................. 150
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Preface
Ground Fault
Unwanted Electricity
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What Causes a Ground Fault?
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source somewhere, that induced power can turn on
the ground fault light.
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can be the middle of a conduit. Buried wire insulation
that isn’t suited for wet and buried conditions can be
the location of the ground fault.
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When to Fix a Ground Fault
The second ground fault can set off a false alarm or short
out the whole fire alarm system.
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something else is having a problem that is causing the
ground fault, or whether the ground fault is causing a
problem with something else. The only way of telling for
sure is for the technician to go on site and look.
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By reinsulating the wire or replacing a device, the
technician interrupts the electrical path and removes the
ground fault.
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Fire Alarm System Ground Fault Detector
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Inside the fire alarm panel is a connection to ground. It’s
an electrical path to the metal of the building.
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fire alarm power supplies and fire horns, or it shuts down a
whole loops of detectors, or it cause false alarms, or
possibly it shuts down the whole fire alarm system.
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A catastrophic failure probably won’t occur with a second
ground fault. There is a good possibility, though, that the
fire alarm system won’t detect all fires, won’t warn
everyone of fire, produce a false alarm, or some other
perilous failure will occur.
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The problem is that to the untrained building owner, once
the ground fault light is turned off, the ground fault
appears to be fixed. The owner doesn’t want to pay a
service charge for a problem that’s not there, so the
technician doesn’t even have a chance to come back to fix
the ground fault. The ground fault doesn’t get fixed.
All this is to say that the ground fault light and trouble
buzzer isn’t just to announce a problem, but to make sure
the building owners are annoyed enough to get the fire
alarm system fixed.
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The ground fault light on the panel can only indicate that
something is wrong; somewhere in the building, inside the
panel, or anywhere outside the panel, electricity is leaking
to ground.
Does this mean that the ground fault is gone, or does this
mean the ground fault is still on the system, but not quite
bad enough to turn on the ground fault light?
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electrical leakage, the leakage isn’t quite enough to turn
on the ground fault light.
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Troubleshooting Error – Double “On” Indication
Plus Equals
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Yes, there’s only one ground fault, but both the panel and
the module have detected the ground fault. Until both the
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module and the panel have cleared the ground fault, the
light will stay on.
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Troubleshooting Error – Multiple Ground Faults
Each ground fault turned on the ground fault light, and the
light will not turn off again until all ground faults are
disconnected or fixed.
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A few panels “latch” the trouble indicator. Latching means
that once a trouble occurs, the panel turns on the trouble
light and the panel keeps the trouble light turned on even
after the trouble is cleared.
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internally connect the ground fault detector and check for
a ground fault about once every minute.
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Unreliable Ground Fault Light
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Troubleshooting – Look at What the Panel is
Looking At
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Imprecise Electronics
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Finding the Reference Voltage
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The fire alarm control panel has an Internal Voltage
Reference Point. For the technician, though, finding that
point on the printed circuit board is impossible. There’s no
test point to connect the voltmeter to, and there’s no
documentation to tell the technician where to find this
reference point.
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The reference voltage is a comparison voltage; it’s the
voltage measured from the positive battery terminal as it
is compared to building ground, and it’s a second voltage
measured from the negative battery terminal as it is
compared to building ground. Measuring this voltage can
tell the technician a great deal about whether there is a
ground fault in the first place, and it also shows other
information about the ground fault.
Power Supply
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Troubleshooting Trick
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Compare Voltages
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Exception
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measurements for each make and model of fire alarm
panel you’re working on. The measured voltages are
different for each make and model, but learning to make
these measurements is a good start to becoming an expert
ground fault fixer.
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voltmeter conducts current to ground from the long, thin
capacitor called a fire alarm loop.
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will start out lower than expected, and drift down
even lower over the next few seconds.
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Troubleshooting – Categorizing Ground
Faults
Before going out and looking for the ground fault, it would
be a good idea to know just what to look for. To find, many
ground faults require specialized detection equipment,
and using the right detection equipment saves a lot of
time.
Threshold
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When the quantity of electricity crosses the line between
“not enough electricity to cause a problem” to “enough
electricity to cause a problem”, the amount of current flow
has crossed a threshold.
Categories
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The word “guess” is being used very carefully because all
troubleshooting is really a guess-and-verify process. Guess
the direction to go to find a problem, and verify that the
problem is actually in that direction.
• Condition
• Type
• On – Steady
• On – Intermittently
• Off – Steady
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On – Steady
On – Intermittently
Off – Steady
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Ground Fault Type
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Hard Ground Fault
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Using an Ohmmeter When Looking for a Hard
Ground Fault
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tested, and the other lead of the tester is connected to
building ground.
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Soft Ground Fault
More difficult to
categorize than a hard
ground fault is the soft
ground fault.
Oftentimes, even
though the ground
fault light on the panel
isn’t turned on, the
soft ground fault is
still on the fire alarm system.
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down, apply a lessor voltage and the resistance
goes up.
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Measuring a Soft Ground Fault
With a soft ground fault, one ohmmeter does not work like
another ohmmeter. Sometimes an insulation tester is
needed just to detect the same ground fault as the fire
alarm system can detect.
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Water Based Soft Ground Fault
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The wearing off of insulation, though, can take many years
before the insulation is thin enough to become a soft
ground fault.
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Measuring with an Expensive Ohmmeter or
Insulation Tester
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range than 50 volts, or even greater, so the insulation
tester can, given the right circumstances, damage fire
alarm equipment. If a commercially made insulation tester
is used, make sure of the switch settings each and every
time.
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To build an insulation tester for use on fire alarm systems,
use the instructions printed in the Nuts and Volts
Magazine September 2010 Issue, Page 42. It’s on the web
at
http://nutsvolts.texterity.com/nutsvolts/201009/?folio=4
2&pg=42#pg42
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Induced ground faults, while not happening very often,
can’t always be detected with normal test equipment like
a standard ohmmeter or DC voltmeter, and they don’t
always turn on the ground fault light. Even though they
compromise the fire alarm system, sometimes they may
not even turn on the trouble light.
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Source or Power – “Normal” Ground Fault
versus “Induced” Ground Fault
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Normally, we as technicians are so used to assuming that
the electricity for the ground fault is only from the fire
alarm system that we don’t even think about it.
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• Directly applied DC
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• Directly applied AC
• Magnetically coupled AC from power wires or speaker
audio wires inside conduit
• Received from a nearby radio or television station
• Other Electromagnetic Interference (EMI)
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Common Mode
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Differential Mode
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Using Hints to Categorize
The hints can show where the power or signal came from,
like:
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Safe to the Fire Alarm System
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The internal power supplies for the hard and soft ground
faults include the internal power supply and the backup
batteries in:
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Unsafe to People and the Fire Alarm System
Until the induced ground fault is found and fixed, what the
added electricity is doing to the fire alarm system is
anybody’s guess.
• Utility power
• Building service equipment like HVAC air handlers
• Elevator control systems
• Radio and TV stations
• Other
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When the carbon path connects the fire alarm system
wiring to utility power, the whole system becomes
electrically hot. More than once, I’ve had to correct this
type of problem.
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• Radio Frequency EMI (Electro-Magnetic Interference
or RF)
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How Does Conduit Make Crosstalk Worse?
Starting out, we
see the
magnetic field
around a
magnet.
Whether it’s a
bar magnet or
an
electromagnet,
a magnet
generates a
magnetic field.
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If we add a
magnetic
conductor
to pass the
magnetic
field from
one pole of
the magnet
to the
other, the magnetic field is concentrated, making it
stronger.
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This is a real problem. (Don’t laugh, I’ve had to correct this
exact problem.)
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Follow the Wire
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Stray AC Voltage on Conduit Ground
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Electrical current passing through a resistor will produce a
voltage from one end of the resistor (conduit) to the other.
Simply because conduit is supposed to be ground-voltage
potential, doesn’t make it so; Ohms Law does not go away
for conduit.
Ground-Voltage Sensitive
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• Some leakage in the lighting system
• Some other source of stray current on the grounding
system
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When a separate green ground wire for signal ground isn’t
installed, the AC voltage riding on the conduit ground can
get into the fire alarm system. It has happened.
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prevent stray voltages on the safety-ground system from
getting into sensitive electronics in the data room.
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Speaker Circuits
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transmitted and then coupled magnetically back into the
system, this cross-talking is still an induced ground fault.
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On one occasion, that took some hard troubleshooting at a
large hospital to find and fix the crosstalk.
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Crosstalk into the Speaker Line
For these people, because the fix was very expensive, the
best that could be done was to tell the people that “this is
the way it is.”
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Radio Frequency EMI
No matter
how many
splices are in a
wire, any wire
is an antenna.
The same wire
can be used as
a transmitter
antenna or as
a receiving
antenna. In
fact, the same wire can be used to receive and transmit at
the same time.
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The Hunt
Guess-and-Verify
All troubleshooting
is guess-and-verify.
A technician
guesses at where
the problem is, and then verifies whether the problem is
there. Then guesses again and verifies again. Then guesses
again …
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When troubleshooting, though, what takes the greatest
time is verifying all of the wrong guesses.
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When a loop, both sides of it, is separated from the panel,
the separation divides the loop from the panel. The
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But then again, the technician can save time and hunt for
the ground fault the easy way… Divide-and-Conquer. To
divide and conquer, guess where the middle of the loop is,
and divide the loop there. When divided, there are now
two shorter loops to be verified to have a ground fault,
one shorter loop at a time.
Divide and conquer again. Once the ground fault is verified
to be on one of the loops, go to the middle of that loop.
Divide the loop so there are two loops, and verify which
loop has the ground fault.
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Divide and conquer again. The loops are shorter.
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Further Hunting Tips
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Take Lots of Pictures
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Voltmeter Verification of NAC Wires
www.douglaskrantz.com/BlogReversingNAC.html
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Owner Verification (Explaining the Ground Fault)
Also, keep in mind that if the loop is a Class A loop, all four
wires of the loop have to be disconnected from the panel.
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Find the segment with the ground fault, and disconnect it.
Reconnect all of the other circuits, and reconnect the
panel.
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technician trying to find a ground fault, though, as-builts
are usually not available.
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• The building was remodeled, and the As-builts were
never updated – crucial changes aren’t shown on the
plans
• The original installation was done by a different
company so the original As-builts are not available
• And so on…
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Figure Out How the Building is Wired
The wires for the loop are hidden in the walls and ceilings
of the building, figuring out where the wires run is a guess-
and-verify process.
In the same building, the wires for the detectors are often
run horizontally down the hall. Older retro-fit buildings,
may have the detectors in vertical risers, also.
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Check Supervision Voltage for Loop Being
Worked On
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Check for End of Line Resistor
Finding out
which pair of
wires in a box
goes to the
end of the line
resistor tells
the technician
to check for
the ground
fault nearer
the panel, or
further from
the panel.
Of course,
when the loop
is taken apart in other places, this won’t work, but try it
anyway; trying it may save time.
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Turn On the Horns and Strobes
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When putting the panel into alarm or into drill, first
disconnect one wire from each of the normal NACs
(Notification Appliance Circuits, the circuits with the horns
and strobes).
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When measuring a hard ground fault with the ohmmeter,
look closely at the exact resistance reading. Usually, it will
show the resistance of the wire between the technician
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Knowing this can save a lot of time in the divide-and-
conquer troubleshooting process.
Many times,
while
troubleshooting
(hunting ground
faults counts as
troubleshooting),
giving up and
doing the
troubleshooting
the hard way is
actually the easy
way.
Following the
wire is often the
final tip for
looking for the ground fault because the short-cuts shown
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earlier all have their limits. Those earlier tips will only get a
technician close to a ground fault.
Yes, this happens, and once the earlier tips have been used
up, physically following the wire (or the conduit) shows
where to find the tight elbows. I have found several
ground faults that way.
To make sure all the wires are landed exactly where they
were removed, use the pictures that were taken.
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• “Does the system detect fires?”
• “Does system warn people?”
• “Does the system shut down, open, or close what it’s
supposed to?”
CYA Paperwork
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If later, for any reason, there’s a fire or an injury, those in
authority will read everything about the maintenance that
was done on the fire alarm system. When completing the
paperwork, make sure that those in authority will know
that the fire alarm system was tested and it worked as
normal once the maintenance was completed.
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References
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Audio Cyclopedia – Second Edition - 1974
Howard M. Tremaine
Published by Howard W. Sams Co., Inc., The Bobbs-Merrill
Co., Inc., Indianapolis, Kansas City, New York
Mysterious Rays
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http://www.aip.org/history/electron/jjrays.htm
AIP | American Institute of Physics
Last Referenced January 2019
Diode
http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Diode
Engineering and Technology History Wiki
Last Referenced January 2019
Cathode Ray
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode_ray
Wikipedia – The Free Encyclopedia
Last Referenced January 2019
Diode
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Diode
New World Encyclopedia
Last Referenced January 2019
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