SafeWatch 2000 & Smoke Alarm Verification

[ribick]

It would appear that the ADT Safewatch 2000 Alarm System (a.k.a. an Honeywell/Ademco Vista-20SE) has a "feature" whereby any (hardwired?) smoke detector connected to zone 1, will, upon detecting a fire event (whether an actual fire, or a push of the smoke alarm's test button) first cause the zone to reset itself, thereby restarting all the smoke detectors on it, and then, if and only if the fire condition remains (a.k.a. the test button on a detector on the zone is pressed again) will it actuate the alarm's siren, and otherwise notify the central monitoring station.

I understand this feature had use (in the past? historically?) to prevent false alarms with older less sophisticated smoke alarms, that might get triggered, say, as a result of the dust of smacking a dusty couch cushion clean, but the makers of my smoke alarms (System Sensor 2WTA-B) seems to think this "waiting period" featuer has outlived its usefulness given the intelligence and data gathering abilities of its I3 line of smoke detectors. I wonder if this "waiting period," which on my alarm system--in conjuction with these aforementioned smoke detectors, is about 60 seconds, is really worth preventing the false alarms that those extra 60 seconds may help in saving a life in a true emergency.

As there appears to be no way to override this "waiting period" feature (even when configuring the alarm in "technician mode") I was wondering if merely moving my hardwired fire protection off of zone 1, and on to another compatible zone might be a way to address this.

For example, one of my WIRELESS smoke detectors is not on zone 1, and will, upon pressing its test button, immediately trigger an alarm event.

If not, are you aware of any more advanced and backwardly compatible alarm systems that don't have this "waiting period" feature--or allow it to be programatically turned off/controlled? Or, can people cite for this relatively ignorant contributor, why this "waiting period" is really a good thing, and that I should shut my mouth and work on life's larger problems?

Thanks

[MrRonFL]

Zone 1 is the only zone that supports 2-wire smokes, so you are stuck, there.

The verification feature does seem to be hardwired in (on more recent systems, it's optional, so any current generation system will not have this feature turned on by default).

Since you have one fast acting smoke, I honestly wouldn't worry about it, but if you really want to, get a Vista 20p motherboard and upgrade your system (assuming that at least one of your existing keypads is an alpha keypad).