Park-side co-ops and their old systems
Our co-op board suspects that half the "broken buzzer" reports from residents are really people pressing the wrong button or letting go too soon. How do you tell user error from a real fault before we spend money?
By watching each resident do what they normally do. On the first visit, we ask every resident who has reported a problem to be at their station while someone rings from the street, and we watch the whole sequence: whether the chime sounds, whether they lift the handset or press talk, how long they hold it, which button they press to release, and whether the door actually opens downstairs. Brick Underground quoted Pete Carmello of Lock and Tech in Brooklyn saying "a lot of times it's user error," and in buildings where the same system has been in place for decades, with stations of different ages from different repairs, it is easy for a resident to learn the wrong habit on a station that works differently from the neighbor's.
What we write down is a list, apartment by apartment, with one of three results: works when used correctly, works but needs an adjustment such as a longer release time or a louder chime, or fails. Only the third group is a fault. If most of your reports turn out to be the first group, the right spend is an hour showing residents how their stations work and a one-page card for each apartment, not a new system.
One repair company told our board that the old system is basically fine and another said it is obsolete. Which one is right?
Often both, about different parts of it. Brick Underground quoted Daniel Vasquez of Paragon Security and Locksmith on both sides of the argument: that an older system's core wiring is typically still fine even when the system is outdated, and that "intercoms are getting outdated" as owners increasingly want a camera at the door. The cable in the walls and the equipment on them age at very different rates. Copper pairs that were installed properly in a riser can carry signal for a very long time; panels, stations and power supplies wear out, lose parts support and fall behind what residents expect.
So we answer the question in two parts. For the cable, we meter each pair from the panel to the apartment and report which pass, which are marginal and which fail. For the equipment, we tell you whether parts are still available for what you have and what residents would gain by changing it. A building can easily have sound cable and obsolete equipment, which is the best case: a new panel and stations over the old riser, at the lower end of our multi-unit range.
Our 1920s co-op's intercom has been patched by several repair companies over the years, and nobody can tell us what make or model it is. Can it be identified, and does that matter?
It can usually be identified, and it matters more than most boards expect. The maker's name and model are normally printed on the back of the street panel, on the power supply in the cellar or inside an apartment station, and the wiring pattern at the panel tells an experienced technician a great deal even when the labels are gone. In a building that several companies have serviced, we often find two or three generations of equipment working together, which is itself useful information.
It matters for three reasons. First, it tells you whether replacement parts can still be had, which decides whether a repair is a sensible option at all. Second, it tells you what the old cable was designed to carry, which narrows the choice of new system: some modern two-wire systems are built to run on a single pair per apartment, while others need more conductors or a network cable. Third, it tells the board what it actually owns, which is the starting point for any written quote, from us or anyone else.
If the system cannot be identified, or turns out to be several systems spliced together, we say so in writing, and we price the riser test before we price any new equipment.
Our building pays a virtual doorman company, but a different company installed the street panel years ago. When the door will not release for a visitor, whose problem is it?
It depends on where in the chain the release fails, and the fastest way to find out is to test the chain in pieces. A release command can come from the remote attendant, from an apartment station or from the super. If the door opens when an apartment presses release but not when the attendant does, the fault is on the remote service's side or in the connection between its equipment and your panel. If it fails from every source, the problem is almost certainly the strike, the power supply or the wiring to the door, which belongs to whoever services the entry system.
Buildings get stuck when nobody has drawn that line. Each company tests its own part, finds it working, and points at the other. We document, on one sheet, every path a release command takes to the door, which company is responsible for each, and where the two systems connect, so that the next time the door will not open the board can call the right company first.
When we install a new panel in a building with a remote service, that connection point is built so that it can be tested and disconnected separately from the apartments. The remote company can then be changed, or dropped, without touching the residents' system.
Rentals, mixed-use buildings and large new lobbies
Our Prospect Avenue building has stores on both sides of the residents' door, and the shops' delivery drivers keep ringing apartments to get let in. How can the panel stop that?
Mostly by making it obvious which door and which panel belong to whom, and by giving the shops their own. A driver standing on the sidewalk with a hand truck is looking for the quickest way to get rid of a delivery. If the residents' panel is the only buzzer in sight, or is labeled only with apartment numbers that mean nothing to him, he will press buttons until someone opens. The first step is a separate station at each shop's door, ringing inside the shop, so that its deliveries have somewhere to go.
The residents' panel then gets clear, visible labeling as a residential entrance, a directory or numbered buttons laid out so a stranger cannot guess his way in, and, on video systems, a camera that lets residents see a hand truck before they press release. If a shop really does need to receive through the building's hall, for example because its only rear access is through the residents' corridor, that becomes a separate controlled door with its own release, not a reason to buzz drivers into the stair.
We manage a 55-apartment rental near Terrace Place that went up in 1990. What should a service agreement for its entry system include, so it does not end up patched by whoever is free that week?
A written description of what is installed, a named response for the kinds of failure that matter, and records that stay with the building. The description is the start: the make and model of the panel, stations and power supply, where the power supply and the riser are, which pairs serve which apartments, and any connection to fob readers, cameras or an outside service. Without it, every visit begins with a new technician rediscovering the building.
The agreement should then separate a door that will not lock or will not release, which needs attention the same day, from a single apartment's dead station, which can be scheduled. It should say who supplies parts and on what warranty, and what happens to the records if the agreement ends. A building of this size, built after 1968 with more than eight apartments, falls under §50-a and the Housing Maintenance Code, so the managing agent also needs, after every repair, a dated record of which apartments were tested and what the result was.
We do not insist that a building sign anything with us to get a quote or an installation. But when we install a system, we leave the building the description, the wiring record and the test sheet, so that whoever services it next, us or anyone else, starts from facts.
In a lobby that serves hundreds of apartments, what happens when two visitors try to call from the panel at the same moment?
On most panels, the second visitor waits. A typical door station handles one call at a time: while one visitor is talking to an apartment or to the attendant, the next sees a busy indication or simply waits until the screen is free. In a building of a few dozen apartments that is rarely noticed. In a building like 1 Park Point, with 375 rental units, a single street panel can become a queue at the busy hours of the day, especially when food deliveries, couriers and guests all arrive in the same evening hour.
The answers are physical and procedural. Physically, a large lobby can have more than one call station, for example one at the street door and one at a second entrance or in a vestibule, each able to call any apartment. Procedurally, frequent visitors such as couriers can be given a separate path, such as a delivery code that opens only the package room or a vestibule, so that they do not use the panel at all.
When we plan a large new building's entry, we ask the managing agent or developer how many visitors arrive at the peak hour and how many of them are deliveries, and size the number of panels to that. It is far cheaper to add a second call station while the lobby is being finished than afterward.
Row houses and small new buildings
The intercom maker told us it would design a system for our three-family Calder house for free. Why would we still pay an installer to come and look at the house?
Because the manufacturer designs from what you tell it, and the installer finds out what is actually there. A Brownstoner reader asking about a simple buzzer and intercom for a three-family was told to call Aiphone, which would "design the system for you for free," and that is good advice as far as it goes. A manufacturer's design will tell you which door station, which apartment stations and which power supply fit three apartments, and that part is genuinely useful.
What it cannot tell you is whether the front door's frame will take an electric strike without being replaced, whether the old bell wire to the upper floors is usable or has to be replaced, where the cable can run through a row house whose party walls are shared with the neighbors, whether there is a place in the cellar for the power supply near an outlet, and how the door station will sit on the facade. Those are the things that decide the price, and they are only learned standing in the house.
The two work well together. If you already have a manufacturer's design, send it with your photos, and we will price the installation from it, flag anything the house will not allow, and tell you which of our Brooklyn ranges it falls in, usually $700 to $1,800 for a three-household video system with existing wiring reused where it tests well.
We are putting up a small building on Prospect Avenue with six apartments over a store. Nothing in the intercom law reaches six apartments. What would you still put in, and when?
A talk-and-release system to every apartment, a separate door station for the store, and cable for both installed while the framing is open. The law's eight-apartment line in §50-a is a minimum, not a design, and a six-apartment rental without a working intercom is a building whose tenants prop the street door, lose packages and complain to the owner every week. The cost difference between doing this at framing and after the walls are closed is large, because almost all of it is labor to run cable.
At design we mark the street door station, the store's own door station, the indoor station position in each apartment, the riser route from the cellar and the location of the power supply. At framing, the riser gets its own path from the cellar to each floor, back boxes go in at each apartment, and the street door frame is ordered prepared for the strike. At finishing, the panel and stations go up after the paint, and every apartment is tested from the street before the first tenant moves in.
