House alarm maintenance

[mustang1]

What kind of maintenance do you need on a house alarm? Why would it need servicing every year? Sounds like a con to me but people just pay it because "you have to keep the family secure".

 

[Deleted User]

What kind of maintenance do you need on a house alarm? Why would it need servicing every year? Sounds like a con to me but people just pay it because "you have to keep the family secure".

Change/check back up battery, probably run it through the different zones and make sure any sensors and door contacts are working, at a guess?

Never bothered myself.

 

[bikingdad90]

The service I believe is to check the back up battery is in good condition and fully charged, especially if it’s gone off at any point and to check things like the box outside still lights up, the siren works and the sensors work too.

To be honest, I’d like to know when the last time someone investigated the siren going off if they heard it, round here it just gets ignored or “err/him next door again…” moaning. There is one particular house who I mentioned it to; they weren’t aware of the consistency of their alarm going off, turned out the connections were damaged to the sensor and it was triggering the siren.

 

[ebikeerwidnes]

WHen I first had an alarm I had a maintenance contract
Dunno what they did every year but the main reason for having the contract was in case something went wrong and it went off and wouldn't stop - they would respond to an emergency 24/7

 

[bagpuss]

I just change to back up battery in main panel 4 years .

Test it by going out the final exit door and coming back through another .Assuming you have two doors .

During a power cut if your alarm does not ring could mean a possible flat battery imho .

 

[mustang1]

When I lived in Manchester we had two power cuts. On both occasions every single alarm sounded except for ours.

One neighbour asked if our alarm was faulty. I told them no, ours is the only one that has a functioning backup battery in the control box. As someone with a history in electronics I routinely checked elements of the system myself every year or so.

This included checking all batteries / storage capacitors (control unit and bell box) and charging circuit. Each PIR had its cover removed and any dust cleared out. Finally a sensor test and awslk through test was carried out to ensure coverage was as expected.

I had a monitored alarm so I would also check the connection with the monitoring centre, including the two way communication.

Didn't take long at all and certainly not something I pay to have done though I do appreciate some insurance companies ask for service certification on alarms as a condition of cover.

No idea what checks would be done under a contract bytIwas content with what I did.

Thanks. This answers a lot. We have a maintenance contract but to my mind it felt like "checking the batteries in the torch works" which I could do myself (ok, it's more than checking the battery but, also being of technical background, was not too far-fetched for me. My problem is that I can't be bothered to check so I will continue paying the maintenance program, but now (thanks to yours and others answers) I will do it more happily.

Thanks everyone!

 

[SydZ]

I just change to back up battery in main panel 4 years .

Test it by going out the final exit door and coming back through another .Assuming you have two doors .

During a power cut if your alarm does not ring could mean a possible flat battery imho .

On the contrary. An alarm ringing in event of a power cut is a nailed on certainly of a faulty battery.

Alarms are designed to trigger in event of a power disconnect. It's one of a number of anti-tamper features.

Others include cutting the cable to the bell box, cutting the cable to any sensor and removing the cover from any part of the system. All these will raise a 'tamper' alarm and trigger sounder.

This is achieved by a signal line being held 'high', ie 12 volts and go low, zero volts, in event of any tamper situation above.

Bell boxes used to have a battery too. Often modern ones feature a super capacitor which is meant to be more reliable and longer lasting. This allows them to 'go off' , even in a power failure state, in event of the high signal to them going low.

 

[CXRAndy]

The battery in the control panel will fail. A quick simple test is to switch off power to the alarm panel. Leave it a minute, power up again. If the alarm doesn't start sounding the alarm box, the battery is OK for the moment.

A sounding alarm after power interruption is a telltale sign the back up battery has failed. They fail anywhere 1-5 years of use. Very cheap to get, easy to install if you have the alarm pin codes

 

[midlife]

Our last insurance renewal asked about alarm maintenance, I called them back as we don't have any and doesn't make any differences to claims on our policy. Maybe check with the insurers as to what they want...

 

[BianchiVirgin]

When I lived in Manchester we had two power cuts. On both occasions every single alarm sounded except for ours.

One neighbour asked if our alarm was faulty. I told them no, ours is the only one that has a functioning backup battery in the control box. As someone with a history in electronics I routinely checked elements of the system myself every year or so.

This included checking all batteries / storage capacitors (control unit and bell box) and charging circuit. Each PIR had its cover removed and any dust cleared out. Finally a sensor test and awslk through test was carried out to ensure coverage was as expected.

I had a monitored alarm so I would also check the connection with the monitoring centre, including the two way communication.

Didn't take long at all and certainly not something I pay to have done though I do appreciate some insurance companies ask for service certification on alarms as a condition of cover.

No idea what checks would be done under a contract but I was content with what I did.

What you've described is exactly what is supposed to be done, but very rarely is.

 

[neil_merseyside]

Most insurance companies want an approved alarm on a maintenance contract, thing is the policy discount is much less than the maintenance fees. If you have a maintained system it is likely you'll pay a big fee (5+yrs of contract) to become stand alone/self monitoring, so that's have the maintenance counter turned off and be given the engineers code to allow you to open the system without tamper tantrums .

 

[MrGrumpy]

We have an alarm it was inherited with the house. The massive thunder storms we had a couple of years ago caused the alarm to go off with the vibration. Of course we we’re unable to reset it as I lost the code .
Frantic trying to silence it , eventually dissed the fused spur and pulled the 6v battery. It’s remained like that ever since ! Of course now we have a doggy we cant rearm it anyway !

 

[Twizit]

We have an alarm it was inherited with the house. The massive thunder storms we had a couple of years ago caused the alarm to go off with the vibration. Of course we we’re unable to reset it as I lost the code .
Frantic trying to silence it , eventually dissed the fused spur and pulled the 6v battery. It’s remained like that ever since ! Of course now we have a doggy we cant rearm it anyway !

We were in the same position when we moved (dog). Just got a couple of sensors changed to be pet friendly. They don’t trigger unless a mass of over 35kg or something like that is involved. Seems to work well as dog (retriever) doesn’t set it off but I have by mistake on a few occasions!

 

[fossyant]

We've never paid for maintenance, as as others have said - battery. I've replaced it once.

 

[presta]

Next doors alarm went off at 3am, it's right outside my bedroom window and they weren't at home. I've not heard of any burglaries in the 60 years I've lived here, they're just a nuisance.

To be honest, I’d like to know when the last time someone investigated the siren going off if they heard it

Some research into helping behaviour from the 1960s might be of interest, the work was done after an infamous incident in which witnesses watched a woman being raped and murdered for half an hour without calling the police.

It might sound bizarre, but the research showed that whilst the probability of a witness intervening to help is 85% if alone, this figure drops to just 31% when there are four or more others. It also showed that if no one acts within the first three minutes, it’s unlikely that anyone will. It also applies to helping yourself: people will leave a building they believe to be on fire if they're alone, but if there are others ignoring the danger they'll ignore it too.

Five key stages involved in helping behaviour were identified:
You must notice the incident.
You must interpret the incident as one where help is required.
You must assume personal responsibility.
You must decide what action to take.
You must act.

Subsequent research showed that people who have been educated in these five steps are twice as likely to help in an emergency as people who haven’t.