Reply to: House / Home Alarms

[mailric]

Forget the alarm. Get a German Shepherd.

[GreenerGrass]

IIRC people like ADT do a decent monitored one with two designated key holders.

Alarm goes off - they ring you to check if it's a false alarm. If you don't answer, or give the wrong password, then they ring the police and the keyholder to check it out.

They also do the same for fire brigade if the smoke detector goes off.

Yeah, I've got an ADT set up. Seems OK so far. You need keyholders within about 20 mins drive of the house.
I think the whole lot fitted was about £800 including covering the garage. Latest movement sensors, wireless etc.

[scott_free]

Got a Yale wirefree system, four PIR's, a couple of door sensors - has worked fine for 4 years, even calls me when it goes off.

[TheFaQQer]

Galaxy stuff gets a vote from me too. If / When I alarm the new house I shall put a galaxy board in most likely.

ADT used to use them; but use a cut down one now. ADT will also charge a hansom monthly fee for the monitoring!

My folks are with ADT because they took over Telecom Security (which was part of BT).

Mind you, BT didn't take a single monthly payment from them for 8 years by mistake, so they found them pretty cheap over all

[HeliCraig]

Galaxy stuff gets a vote from me too. If / When I alarm the new house I shall put a galaxy board in most likely.

ADT used to use them; but use a cut down one now. ADT will also charge a hansom monthly fee for the monitoring!

[TheFaQQer]

IIRC people like ADT do a decent monitored one with two designated key holders.

Alarm goes off - they ring you to check if it's a false alarm. If you don't answer, or give the wrong password, then they ring the police and the keyholder to check it out.

They also do the same for fire brigade if the smoke detector goes off.

[Ken Dodd]

Alarms

Whichever one you get, the best bit of advice I can give is: Use it!

I was up at 5 am this morning watching my neighbours car being driven off by some local bar stewards who had taken the keys from his kitchen. They got in through his garage door - locked - and then from the garage into the house through the connecting door - unlocked. Once they opened the connecting door, they knew that the alarm wasn't on (if it had been on, it would have sounded at that point). They even closed the garage door after themselves, so we couldn't work out how they had got in at first. Neighbour said 'I normally put the alarm on but forgot last night' - famous last words eh?

Go for a panic button and internal (loud) sounder as well. If you hear someone in your house and you can press the panic button and set off the alarm outside AND inside, they shouldn't stay around too long (theoretically).

Address the weakest points of your house when considering what to 'alarm'.

[Liability]

Hi,

I wanted to get an Alarm fitted to my house as anyone got any recommendations ? I'm hardely at home and if I'm at work I'm usually 1.5hrs journey away so I don't want something going off randomly, these days do alarms carry on sounding when they go off or do they stop after a certain amount of time ?

Also what is a ball park figure for a decent system £500, £1000, £1500 ? Would an Argo YALE jobby do the job or are they cr*p ? It would need to cover a 3 bed house with 2 living rooms down stairs.

Bumfluff

The setup for that size house shouldnt be more than £1000 installed.

In terms of false alarms. I have the same system in 2 places and never had a false alarm in 8 years.

The trick is to use dual tek sensors which basically rely on heat and movement [with microwave technology] for the sensor to complete the ciruit and trip the system

This is an example

http://www.guardall.com/product.asp?PageID=915

Next you need to ensure you have a good control panel and get an autodialer installed. When my alarm systems goes off [which it has never yet aside from testing] my autodialler calls me to alert me that some stunted chav has entered my house illegaly. You can talk to people from your phone when it calls you [randomly shouting the Germans are coming or something] or you can disable/reset the alarm]

Both my systems are a mixture of Texacom and Galaxy which have a good industry reputation.

I also have a 4 camera CCTV system online which is the dogs bollox but I wont bore you with that.

Its been a good investment and you can be sure that if someone wants to "have a go" at a house theyll always choose the house without the alarm [so make sure you have 2 or 3 bellboxes on the outside]

[TheVoice]

Our house is wired up with the sensors but the control unit is not switched on. Never has been as I was told it was bust.

What are the chances I could just get a new control pad and replace the old one with that? I remember wiring one up at Uni so i should be OK with doing the job.

Depends on the make & model. Is it a remote keypad with seperate "main unit" elsewhere? Let me know a make \ model if you can & may be able to help. Alternatively a picture may help. It may not be bust - it's usually a problem with batteries & fuses which can all be replaced. Failing that you just get a new control unit and\or keypad & use the existing PIR's etc connected into it. Easy really.

Also what kinds can you wire up to the phone?

Pretty much all pro-kit has communicator outputs on the mainboard. You just buy a communicator & wire it, then program the communicator up with the numbers to dial. Some will even give you a live audio feed in & out of the premises so you can tell the intruder to <expletive> off!

Really it is not the main alarm I need it for, living in a big house I would not know if someone was in, so I would rather be alerted if someone was in the house so I could go down and kick them out/phone the police myself.

I have a similar problem although I usually keep the doors locked as the place is full of servers! I also have the rare luxury of a brick built shed which could really be converted into a maisonette but that's currently full of tools & the usual shed 'clutter'!

[zara_backdog]

Just make sure you have a keyholder who is contacted when the dam thing goes off, also ensure it does have a battery backup in case of power cuts.

[PAH]

Also what kinds can you wire up to the phone?

BT do some that will text/call you and several designated 'responders'. Probably others do the same too as an add-on module if not out of the box.

[minestrone]

Our house is wired up with the sensors but the control unit is not switched on. Never has been as I was told it was bust.

What are the chances I could just get a new control pad and replace the old one with that? I remember wiring one up at Uni so i should be OK with doing the job.

Also what kinds can you wire up to the phone?

Really it is not the main alarm I need it for, living in a big house I would not know if someone was in, so I would rather be alerted if someone was in the house so I could go down and kick them out/phone the police myself.

[AtW]

Scantronic 9651 Control unit & keypad (No Prox, Keypad only) £55.87
PIR Lounge £9.71
PIR Dining Room £9.71
PIR Hall £9.71
PIR Utility £9.71
PIR Garage £9.71
Garage Door £9.80
Front Door £1.15
Back Door £1.15
External Sounder £20.50
Cable £9.50 (You'll need 2!)
Backup Battery £9.95

Total: 165.97
+ 1 Weekend

£1000 for replacement windows bricked by your neighbours totally pissed off with your alarm doing their head non-stop while you are away on holidays.

[TheVoice]

You should pay about than 300 quid for a decent professional grade system, if you install it yourself. There are always Scantronic 9651's on eBay which are brand new (Purchased & installed several, top stuff), PIR's , cable & that jazz can be pickedup from the likes of Alert Electrical (google them) whose prices are very reasonable. I can recommend the Pyronix brand of PIR's & Texecom sounders.

If you only wanted to cover downstairs then this is what you're looking at:

Scantronic 9651 Control unit & keypad (No Prox, Keypad only) £55.87
PIR Lounge £9.71
PIR Dining Room £9.71
PIR Hall £9.71
PIR Utility £9.71
PIR Garage £9.71
Garage Door £9.80
Front Door £1.15
Back Door £1.15
External Sounder £20.50
Cable £9.50 (You'll need 2!)
Backup Battery £9.95

Total: 165.97
+ 1 Weekend

If you can wire a plug, then you can install your own alarm system.

The Yale stuff from Argos, in comparison, is yes - tulip! The kit i've listed out above is the stuff you'll pay a few grand for to a pro installer.

If you need any help & advice, feel free to PM me.

[NickFitz]

AFAIK alarms generally stop sounding after a couple of minutes these days.

Be aware that, if you get a cheap unmonitored system then it's unlikely anybody will do anything about the alarm, unless they ring the Police to complain about it.

If, on the other hand, you get a monitored system and encounter more than a couple of false alarms a year, the Police will no longer respond to your alarms unless you've guaranteed payment for false alarms, and even then you'll be way down their list of priorities

Others will know more about this than me (and there's almost certainly a forum devoted to the topic), but I believe the best approach is that you either buy boxes to stick on your house that don't actually do anything, but will make most potential burglars scout around for an easier target; or you go for the best fully-monitored system you can buy, and if that involves replacing doors and windows that might rattle a bit in a gust of wind, you do so, as it's cheaper (over the years) than paying for the false callouts.

I think my parenthetical callout to other forums devoted to this topic might be your best bet; sadly, my own initial Google search includes such weirdness as shedblog.co.uk ("Join us on the shed talk forum") in its results, so you may want to devise your own search terms