Got called for a simple keypad swap that turned into a 3 day crawl space adventure

Honestly, the job was just to swap an old 6160 keypad in a nice house. Took the old one off, went to put the new one on, and the whole zone list went nuts. Spent a full day just tracing wires back to the panel, no luck. Ngl, I finally found the issue on day two. The original installer, maybe 20 years ago, had run a single zone wire through the attic, down a wall, and into a completely different crawl space to hit a motion sensor first. Took me another day to re-run a clean line. Has anyone else ever found a hidden junction like that buried in insulation?

2 comments

2 Comments

gavinwood2d ago

Always check for a hidden splice in the insulation.

jade6182d ago

Oh man, that's the worst! Classic installer logic right there. "Hey, I'll just save five feet of wire by routing it through a nightmare maze." Finding that must have felt like winning the world's worst lottery. You just know they were laughing about it twenty years ago, sipping a soda while they buried that time bomb.