Tried a honeywell vista panel with no ground wire on a job in Detroit last week

I was running late on a commercial install in Detroit last Tuesday and the ground terminal was stripped out on the panel. Figured I'd just skip it and see what happened, you know, just for the day. The system worked fine all day but the keypad started acting weird around 4pm, flashing random zones. Learned the hard way that these panels need that ground to filter out interference from the building's HVAC system. Has anyone else tested this on purpose or just me?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_charlie1mo ago

Oh man I did something similar on a house out in the suburbs a few years back. The ground screw was cross threaded so I just wrapped the wire around the screw and hoped for the best. Worked fine for about three weeks then started getting phantom alarms at 2am every Tuesday. Customer was not thrilled when I showed up at 7am to find a loose wire causing the whole thing to act like a haunted house prop. Learned my lesson after that one, grounds are non negotiable now no matter how late I am.

kevin_harris781mo ago

Honestly that used to be me too until I had a similar spooky wakeup call.

eric7231mo ago

That 4pm phantom zone thing you got is exactly what happened to me with a missing ground on a Vista 20p. I spent two hours chasing a non-existent wiring issue before I remembered I left the ground off. Yeah those HVAC systems kicking on can totally mess with the panel without that reference to earth.