DAE have trouble with EOL resistors getting buried under attic insulation?
Honestly I got called out to a house in Bakersfield last week where the panel showed a zone fault every time the AC kicked on, and I traced it to a resistor the original installer zip-tied right against a return duct. I moved it to a junction box about 4 feet away and the false alarms quit. Has anyone else run into the same thing, and do you guys keep spares of the same value in your truck?
That duct thing makes total sense because the return air is cold and the attic is hot, so the resistor is sitting there swinging between two temps all day and its value drifts with it. Same story with the ones buried under blown-in insulation, the heat builds up around them and they creep out of range. The fix you did is the right one, get it out of the heat and cold cycle and give it some air, and those phantom zone faults usually stop. I'd take it a step further and say don't just move it, make sure the splice is on a real crimp and not a wire nut buried in the pile, because a loose connection will fool you into chasing the resistor when it's really the joint. On the spares question, yeah, keep a little bag of the common values in the truck, 2.2k, 3.3k, 4.7k, 5.6k, 10k, because you never know what the old panel wants and driving back to the shop for a fifty cent part stinks. Couple pieces of tape on each bag with the value wrote on it saves your eyes too.