A customer's offhand remark flipped my take on hardwired zones

I used to push wireless sensors hard on every retrofit, figured it saved time and hassle. Then last month a homeowner in Austin showed me his panel after a lightning strike cooked three wireless receivers, but his old hardwired zones on the same line still read fine. He said, 'the wires are dumb, but they don't forget.' That stuck with me, so I started leaving the existing runs and just adding wireless for the tricky spots. It added maybe 40 minutes per job, but my callbacks dropped noticeably. Anybody else gone back to hybrid setups after a storm story like that?

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wilson.jana13d ago

Hardwired never really dies, just gets ignored. Had a similar thing with a flooded basement last year, wireless went dead, old wires kept working after they dried out. I do the same thing now, keep the runs, add wireless where it makes sense. Storm stories change how you look at a panel pretty fast.