Home Alarm Contractor

[gaffer]

Does any one know, or have used a home alarm company that you are happy with?

Basically the new house is all wired, I just need a company to come in and install the equiptment and do the monitoring.

Andrew

[Benjamin]

Re: Home Alarm Contractor

Want to know the funny part, all that wiring you paid for, many companies won't use 90% of it. Most of it is going wireless from what I understand, my father inlaw built his house 5 years ago and went 2 years ago looking and thats what he was told by all the companies. I didn't even get the wiring installed in the house I am building now because of this. Also talked to a guy that does installations for ADT and he confirmed what my father in law told me. The only wire that they typically need is one from the main level to the basement for power. Maybe a newer house will have different wiring and the alarm companies will look at it different, but I figured I would share what I knew.

Ben

[Kordain]

Re: Home Alarm Contractor

so were gonna have to keep swapping out batteries in all the sensors, thatll be a pain. how many sensors in a house? doors, window shock, passives...

[j_spot]

Re: Home Alarm Contractor

I work in the industry, so Im a bit biased. Ill keep my companys name out of it because in some cases my opinion doesn't match the corporate line.

Heres my take on it.


Having your house wired is great. Wireless is the preferred method these days because nobody wants you putting holes in their walls and fishing wires through. If the wires are there Perfect! If you are springing for the whole deal, get a contact on every door and window possible, plus a motion or two in main areas. If you have pets, I would opt for Glass Break Detectors over motion sensors. Dont listen to them when they tell you its an 80 lbs motion sensor, its BS.

Depending what you expect from the alarm, you may or may not be disappointed. Personally I think home burglary systems are mostly useless - people forget to arm it and when you do response time for guards and Police are dreadful. Guards are pretty much just going to check your hose instead of you leaving work, they aren't going to catch somebody in the act. They will just let you know after youve already been robbed , but if youve been robbed you'll have to go home anyways. But hey it saves on your insurance.

Now home fire detection is priceless. I would have one in a second. Get smoke det for each floor, a CO detector. Non monitored devices are great if somebody is around to hear it, but in the middle of the day if you're at work then whos going to call the fire dept? and if you have a CO alarm you might not be awake or conscious to get yourself out.

Get a cellular backup. 100% get a backup. Alarms need to transmit signals to the company and they use the phone to do that. If a burglar disables your phone system (simple cut to a wire) then your alarm cant send anybody a signal. If you have a backup then the home phone and backup monitor each other and if one goes down the other reports a trouble.

When you are considering what company to go with looking at their response time to alarms, what their contingencies are in case of emergency. My boss used to work for a smaller company is Sask and when they had a power outage at their center they lost everything. So then your alarm is useless.


Also, while wired sensors are great now, if you do any renos in the future, youre going to have troubles.

Also dont get a system that has a control in the keypad. Burglars know which systems those are and all it takes is ripping the keypad off the wall and suddenly there is no way to transmit signals. If the keypad and control are separate it makes it alot harder to do this.

more questions just ask

[nordex]

Re: Home Alarm Contractor

So your saying not much benefit to having sirens and and lights flashing? I thought it was like the commercial and the robber goes running for fear of neighbors etc.

[Kordain]

Re: Home Alarm Contractor

lol, i set ofh the house alarm a while back by mistake and didnt see a single neighbour poking their head out of a door, its jsut an annoying noise to most.

[bonfire]

Re: Home Alarm Contractor

Our house is all wireless and I don't think we have ever changed a battery in 5 or so years. Once every now and again we do a test on all of the sensors and they all still work. Supposedly the system will tell us when there is a deadbattery on the keypad.

[j_spot]

Re: Home Alarm Contractor

Our house is all wireless and I don't think we have ever changed a battery in 5 or so years. Once every now and again we do a test on all of the sensors and they all still work. Supposedly the system will tell us when there is a deadbattery on the keypad.

lucky you!
Sensor batteries on average last 4 years. The keypad will demonstrate a low battery yes. Just hope you are home when it happens. If you are out and the system is armed it can cause a false alarm.

[bonfire]

Re: Home Alarm Contractor

Good to know. The alarm folks told us that it wouldn't let us arm the alarm it is was close to dying or it couldn't get a response from the sensors.

Perhaps we shall do a mass battery change this year sometime.