With fire alarm systems, there is a world-wide need for fire alarm system understanding. People doing the work of designing, installing, servicing, testing, and inspecting the systems need to know why they are doing their work the way they are doing it. However, the training that's usually available often lacks the deeper teaching of "why-is-it-done-this-way?"

Having worked in electronics for over 40 years, and with fire alarm systems for over 20 of those years, I'm trying to fill the need to know the "why-is-it-done-this-way?" of fire alarm systems.

Engineers, designers, installers, technicians, testers, and inspectors from all over the world wonder why; they have questions.

All the questions are legitimate. By treating the questions as genuine, I learn more, and can provide better answers. To help others that have similar questions, both the questions and their answers are published on the website. The explanations, published in Douglas Krantz's Technician's Corner, really help people as they design, service, and test fire alarm systems.

Often, however, a deeper understanding is required than what can be organized into a single web page.

Right now, to get a deeper understanding of the conventional wiring for fire alarm systems, the book "Make It Work - Conventional Fire Alarms - The Technician's Essential Guide to Understanding Conventional Fire Alarm Systems".

Ground faults are a real problem. Information about ground faults is given on the web is good, but to get an in-depth understanding of ground faults, the book "Make It Work - Hunting Ground Faults - The Technician's Essential Guide to Understanding the Elusive Ground Fault".

Signaling Line Circuits (SLCs) are simplified for troubleshooting in the book "Make It Work - Addressable Signaling Line Circuits - The Technician's Essential Guide to Find and Fix Problems in the Two-Wire Signaling Line Circuit (SLC)".