A simple panel swap turned into a four hour nightmare because of one hidden wire

Had a job yesterday to swap out an old Vista 20p for a newer model at a house in Tempe. The homeowner said the old system was acting up, easy enough. Pulled the old panel, everything looked standard. Started wiring the new one, got to the keypad line and realized the old installer had run a single 22/4 for both power and data to the main keypad upstairs. No big deal, I can work with that. But then I found a second, completely separate 22/2 running from the panel area up into the same wall cavity, just cut and tucked back with no label. Spent the next three hours tracing it. Crawled through the attic, pulled the keypad off again, finally found it looped into a motion sensor in a closet we didn't even know was on the system. The original notes from 15 years ago were wrong. What should have been a 90 minute job took me over four hours. Anyone else ever get totally blindsided by a mystery wire that wasn't on any diagram?

2 comments

2 Comments

stella3079d ago

Mystery wires are the worst. Read a forum post last week where a guy found a dead 18/2 just coiled in a ceiling. It was for a long gone smoke detector. No record of it anywhere. Those old install notes are basically useless after a few years. People add stuff, take stuff out, never write it down. Turns a simple swap into a full detective job. Always gotta budget double the time for those old systems.

eva_garcia569d ago

My cousin does low voltage work and told me about a hidden wire for a panic button under a desk. It was spliced into a door contact circuit from like 1998. The prints showed nothing, took him half a day to figure out why the zone kept faulting. Old notes are a total gamble, lol.