Posted: 6/14/2005 10:41:16 AM EDT
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Hey all- Moved into my new house...it has a house alarm. We're renting, so we don't see a need to have the system monitored. Having the alarm monitored only reduces homeowners insurance, not renters insurance. Besides, I just want it to wake me up if someone was trying to break in. Anyhow, I am having a service man out, under a warranty claim, because the system does not work properly. We are getting numberous "open zone" warnings, when everything is closed. I called the builders, and they said that it won't work properly unless it is monitored. Clearly, it won't call the police w/o being monitored, but it should still work and sound alarms. This was my understanding anyhow. Anyone else heard of this? I don't want to pay the monitoring fee because of the reasons listed above. My M-4gery is my home security. Looking for "ammo" to shoot back at the tech if he gives me gruff... Thanks All Erik Johnson |
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I'm not for sure, but I'd say that's BS. I'd think it would work fine and just not call out. Call the manufacturer, not the builder. Brinks, ADT or whatever and see what they say. Edit: That's definite BS. If that's the case, if your phone was out, the system would always say zone open. |
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They should be able to tell you which zone(s) are open. If it can't be corrected easily or if it an insignificant sensor, the zone can be eliminated from the live list to get rid of the OPEN ZONE warning. Does the house have any wireless sensors (usually used for garage doors & out-buildings)? Their transmitters may be battery-powered & those are notorious for giving OPEN ZONE warnings. |
Laugh all you want - the monitoring is worth it to me just for fire/smoke sensor monitoring even if the door/glass/motion sensors were useless (they are not IMHO). My house is out in the sticks and out of sight (no neighbors with line-of-sight). I like to know that - while I am away - if the fire/smoke sensors get tripped, the fire department will be notified immediately. YMMV, of course. ETA: FWIW, I pay less than $200/year for monitoring and the discount on my home-owner's insurance for having a monitored system makes up almost half of that... 
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| Nothing quite like the look on a burglars face when 4 police cars show up. House was ransacked once, but burglar did not manage to break into safe. Two weeks latter he tried again and was met by police. He was not caught, but never came back either. My monitoring is with an old local company and cost about $220 a year. ADP and Brinks just annoyed me too much to continue dealing with them |
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I went through that with my house when I bought it. It is a wired sensor version monitored by ADT. And, yes the monitoring is a rip-off as my friend's brother sells alarms systems and all of the money, commissions, etc, is in the monitoring not the hardware. Chances are your alarm system is locked out by the alarm company much like a cell phone is by the cellular provider. What you need are the access codes on the controller to reprogram the unit. That was impossible for me as the alarm company kept denying stating policy. For your sensor problems, you can bypass that sensor on the control panel. However, the most likely cause is lack of maintenance. Often the magnet is dislodged which needs to be replaced. Another problem is the wired sensor retracts into the hole in your window or door jamb. You will need to pull it back up and resecure. Over time, you may come to the realization that I did... it was better to just buy a pro-quality controller, and replace the sensors (you can reuse the wiring). You will end up with a system you know and have manuals on programming (not through the control panel but using your laptop connected to the controller PCB). You can do some neat things such as paging your cell phone. BTW, I bought mine on the internet somewhere... reused by control panels (or keypad). I narrowed my search down by with units work with my control panels as these are expensive and I have two... one on the wall in the kitchen area and one in the master bedroom. The trick is to put a sensor where a thief will not think of. I've given up on window and door sensors and keep the glass breakage, motion, fire, and some door sensors in operation. Windows, with all the opening and closing, I found was just too much of a pain to keep in operation and not have it bypassed. If you have pets, you may be limited on motion detectors. Finally, the anual monitoring fees was more expensive than my homeowners insurance deduction. |
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It's total BS: My hubby's been in the alarm biz over 20 years. Now, probably someone cut some contact wires OR your contacts were not properly aligned. There are other reasons that zones will trip, but those 2 spring to mind the most. What does the keypad say? Are the zones clearly labled? Look at the contacts in the zones and see if they are aligned and if the wires are secure. If the zone that's in trouble is a motion detector, could be that when they were finishing the Apt bldg the wires in the wall were damaged by drywall screws (hubby hates when drywall guys do stupid crap) If everything is up to snuff, could be that the panel is bad... A million things to troubleshoot here. |
I gotta disagree with this. A monitored system does make my wife feel safe & put's me at ease when i'm not home & she's there alone with our son. Yeah, she knows how to use my guns, but it's always better to be as prepared as possible rather than relying on one thing, plus guns can't help you against a fire. |
| We had an alarm system installed mainly for the "Mommy Mode" since our kids are now able to open door. At least now we know exactly what door or window the little ankle bitters opened and which way they are heading when they try and escape! Ours is monitored too because I travel alot and the wife likes the idea of the two way voice system. |
The alarm has 8 zones, according to the wires attached in the control box (not the keypad). However, nothing is labeled... I've tried opening and closing doors and windows, and I've found that there is a zone for the front, back, and garage door, and one for all the windows. Also, motion detector and fire. One of the errors that I'm getting is for the smoke detectors, because they did label that.... As far as I know, all zones are hardwired. Thanks, Erik Johnson |
When we buy a house, we'll pay to have it monitored. The break on homeowners insurance will pretty much cover the monitoring fee... But as renters, there is no price break on insurance...so no monitoring for me. Erik Johnson |
That doesn't make monitoring a rip-off. Who is going to respond to your alarm if you are at work, or out of town? Who will call the police? Your neighbors are going to do squat about your alarm going off. |
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I am happy to pay for monitoring. If I am not home or unable to answer the call from the security company, they send a unit or fire truck to the house. It can either catch the bastard who broke in or save my wife and/or house. I pay $165 a year and get a discount on insurance. It has been used twice in the three years living there. Both fortunately turned out to be false alarms. But I was notified. |
| I'd be interested in this too ... I bought a place with a pre-wired ADT system but have not activated the monitoring. From speaking to friends who have ADT (in residential AND commercial contexts) their service sucks and is not worth the three year contract. I'm looking to either use my system as-is or replace it with an aftermarket system. |
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Owning my own security company I can tell you what you are charged is the rip off; without a doubt monitoring works. My station receives the alarm and is dispatching within 30 seconds, my local cops on the other hand can take a few minutes to respond, even longer in the county. As for the system, are all the magnets in place along with the contacts? Are both wires hooked to the contacts? At the panel. are the wires hooked to the zones, with resistors in place? There should be a diagram on the panel door showing which terminal is what zone, touch pad and so on. What is the brand of panel and better is it an ADT panel or just a local companies generic one? By the way each panel costs me $1.00 to monitor, I charge $14.99-$19.99. |
OK I put these things in for a living. With that said from what you describe you are either dealing with a broken wire (the panel is not seeing the resistor at the end of the line. Or you might just have a bad panel. Sometimes the powered loop for a two wire smoke goes bad and does not send enuf power out to the device. After working for ADT for 3 years IM me for the dealer codes if you want to try programing it yourself. If that is the case have the make, model on hand so I can help you with it. |
All of the magnets appear to be in place, along with the wiring. There is a diagram on the panel door, but it just specifies what wires go to what zones...no description. The panel is made by GE. I've downloaded the instruction manual. I've got a service tech comming out tommrow, this is covered under warranty. I'll let you all know what he says. Thanks, Erik Johnson |
If I don't get anywhere with the service tech, I'll take you up on this offer. Thanks!! Erik Johnson |
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More than likely the system is not properly programed IE: the panel may be capable of 16 zones or so but only 8 or 10 are actually used, the other zone loops need to be terminated with a resistor to simulate a good loop OR nulled out in the systems programming to ignore the open terminals. This may be due to the system not being programmed in the first place beyond factory defaults or AC power may have been lost at one point long enough for the battery backup to run down or a hardware reset jumper has been pulled or installed. Another possibliity is that previously installed equipment has been removed and those zones not "taken out " of the programming and therefore the system see those zones as open. there should be a bypass feature through which you tell the system to temporarilly ignore those zones but arm the ones that read OK you should have some instructions as to a bypass procedure form the panel manufacturer. |
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I have a system that is not monitored. Can I have it reprogrammed to call my cell phone if something goes wrong? Do you have to have a some kind of computer system to interpret what the system is saying or does it use that annoying computer voice? I told my insurance company that I have an alarm system and they didn't even ask if it was monitored. |
| Well, I'm a pro monitoring guy. When I was broken into, Brinks called the cops and they were here (not in time to catch the little bastards) quickly. I always felt like a chump for paying the monitoring fee, but after thinking about what they could have gotten away with, I happily write my check each month. Doesn't make me feel safe and secure, just another added layer of difficulty for Joe Thief if I'm not home. |
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Monitoring is worth it, believe me. If for NOTHING else, fire protection. If I'm out of town and any of my smoke or heat detectors go off, or any alarm zone is compromised, the fire department or police department is here inside of 5 minutes. AND I get a telephone call letting me know what's going on, with status reports if it's a false alarm, etc. Better than relying on the neighbors. Edit to add: Your alarm should function 100% without monitoring. If the company is telling you otherwise, tell em to fix it, or come and remove the system. |
Technicaly yes you can have your system call any number out there. However if you have it call your cell all you will hear are those anoying little tones kinda like a dialup modem. I know several people who have their systems call their cell. When they get a call from their home number that is nothing but tones they know it is from their system. There are several systems out there that can call a number and do the anoying voice thing but those are usually lower end residential systems not a seriuse system. ITI Simon (simple simon) does this for one. Anouther option is to put in a voice dialer attached to your system. This is a little box attached to your phone and to your system that when it gets a close (dry contact) it will call a preprogramed number and spit out a preprogramed message. Hope this helped
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+1 and I'll add: Your owners manual may have a great deal of information on programming your system to call your cel / pager. DSC 1550s are very common systems that have this feature. |
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While I would love the peace of mind of having a fire alarm call the fire department - most often I think it would be worthless. I lived 1 block from a fire department. They responded in minutes - then spent 20+ minutes setting up. Their policy was valid (do not risk human life for property). Perhaps they would have gone in if lives were at stake, but for property, they only first goal was to contain the fire and protect adjoining property. My apartment was already considered gone when they got there (I had about 80-90% loss). |
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UPDATE: The alarm installers came out, and took a look at the system. They found: 1 bad window switch 1 bad smoke detector connection 1 misaligned door switch All fixed, free of charge (under warranty). They also supplied a instruction manual, listed the zones (per my request), and even helped me carry my treadmill upstairs. Of couse, I had to tip the for the last one... :) He tried to sell me on monitoring, but informed me that the system would work perfectly w/o it. As my reasons earlier, that's good for me. Thanks all for the support and confirmation that it would work w/o monitoring. The builders were just full of junk... After all this trouble (alarm, phone, internet, trash, water, and gas), I'm not looking forward to moving again. Every service either had to be "fixed" or resulted in a long telephone argumet (Cox sucks). Thanks all! Erik Johnson |
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The profit center for these guys is in the monthly service fees. The system that I self-installed calls my cell phone number, announces the zone that is broken and then waits for a code. Pressing my PIN number allows me to shut off the alarm, sound an audible alarm - otherwise the system is silent, or listen in to the house using a microphone. If I don't answer the cell phone it calls my work number and then goes back and forth between the cell and office three times until someone responds with the PIN. I would rather respond myself rather than some Barney Fife. |