House alarms

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367 posts

Ultimate Geek

#702299 17-Oct-2012 08:00

One thing to remember is if you tell your insurance company you have a alarm and get a rebate, is that if you forget to set it and then get burgled they may refuse your claim. Years ago I asked our contents company about this and they said that was the case so I told them to insure us as if we did not have a alarm.

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timmmay

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#702307 17-Oct-2012 08:05

Interesting, thanks Wallop.

Looking around there are heaps of cheaper alarm systems with features like built in remote unlock and GSM notification. The question is how good would any of them be.

Micron seems to be a good brand, but their website sucks so I can't easily work out what they offer. Can they do remote unlock, GSM noticiations?

Gordy7

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#702309 17-Oct-2012 08:10

Anyone had experience with Jaycar wireless alarms and PIRs?

Thanks

Cheers

Gordy

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Bung

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#702318 17-Oct-2012 08:48

kingjj: In the mid 90's the Police did some extensive research and found that something like 96% of residential home alarm activations are false alarms, hence the decision was made to not respond as a matter of course to residential activations.

This didn't need extensive research. False alarms are so common that it's hard to get good neighbours motivated.

At the bach one of the neighbours was talking about motion detecting camera systems being installed by some farmers. Has anyone had experience with this type of system?

kingjj

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#702341 17-Oct-2012 10:11

Bung:
kingjj: In the mid 90's the Police did some extensive research and found that something like 96% of residential home alarm activations are false alarms, hence the decision was made to not respond as a matter of course to residential activations.

This didn't need extensive research. False alarms are so common that it's hard to get good neighbours motivated.

At the bach one of the neighbours was talking about motion detecting camera systems being installed by some farmers. Has anyone had experience with this type of system?

True, but any decision by the Police needs to be backed up by something long and boring to read or else the criticism starts

I've had experience with motion activated cameras in a commercial setting, they are great at saving DVR space. Just make sure you get one that buffers the last X seconds of footage before activation as often they don't detect motion until its quite close. Haven't used any residential grade ones though.

tardtasticx

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#702391 17-Oct-2012 11:24

Sorry but I've never understood the point of a house alarm that doesn't lock the house down. If someone wants to break in, they'll break in, a noisy siren wont stop them.
Our last house had an alarm that didn't work, so we never bothered installing a new one. Then when we moved house, we found out this new one had an alarm installed before we moved, but we decided against using it for multiple reasons:
1) Accidental activation
2) False alarms
3) Damage to hearing
4) Insurance issues

Because our last house didn't have an alarm, we didnt put on our insurance that it did, so we paid a slightly higher rate, and when we moved we just transferred the entire policy over as it was, so even though we have an alarm installed that works, we dont receive a lower rate because we don't use the alarm, so if we get robbed and forget to activate it that one day, the insurer cannot come back and say "we aren't paying you out because you didn't activate your alarm that day."

IMHO, spend that extra money and get good house and contents insurance, which you would need to claim on whether you had an alarm or not.

And regards to personal safety or something, are youtelling me youll go to your neighbours house if you hear their alarm going off? I've never seen anyone do that in our area because its usually a cat or something setting them off.

-Sam

timmmay

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#702404 17-Oct-2012 11:34

The main of an alarm for me is to make it easier for a criminal to rob someone else's house. Thieves probably don't like attention, and the internal screamers would make it not worth the bother. I've got very sensitive hearing so having a remote would be really useful to me, though I think I'm smart enough not to set it off by mistake.

If it goes off the neighbours may or may not do anything about it, they might just to shut it up. I'll want to install a good quality alarm, well installed, to minimise false positives. If it virtually never goes off then if it goes off once then there's a higher chance someone will do something about it.

And hey, I lock my car, I alarm my car, and my house is worth 100X more. Any way to discourage people from going in would seem to be sensible.

Chainsaw

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Ultimate Geek

#702481 17-Oct-2012 13:15

I always respond to a neighbour's alarm. It's the proper, nice, neighbourly thing to do.

benmurphy66

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#702514 17-Oct-2012 14:03

I always go and check it too, but I also take my german sheppard to help check things out..... one time I did it 2am in the morning as I knew they were away.

mattwnz

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#702516 17-Oct-2012 14:07

wallop: One thing to remember is if you tell your insurance company you have a alarm and get a rebate, is that if you forget to set it and then get burgled they may refuse your claim.? Years ago I asked our contents company about this and they said that was the case so I told them to insure us as if we did not have a alarm.

Is that in the fine print though? If you have a power outage or the alarm is faulty then I suspect the same could apply.

wallop

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#702530 17-Oct-2012 14:34

mattwnz:
wallop: One thing to remember is if you tell your insurance company you have a alarm and get a rebate, is that if you forget to set it and then get burgled they may refuse your claim.? Years ago I asked our contents company about this and they said that was the case so I told them to insure us as if we did not have a alarm.

Is that in the fine print though? If you have a power outage or the alarm is faulty then I suspect the same could apply.

I just phoned and asked sometime ago. Remember if they can find a way out of paying up they will and then it is up to you to try and prove them wrong.

jonherries

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#702548 17-Oct-2012 15:11

I figure the alarm thing is a deterrent. You are correct in the comment that a burglar will be "in and out" in 1/5/10 mins, so unless you live in a small town traffic will conspire with the burglar to make sure you are too late to get home in time to catch them.

I like the idea of your neighbours, but it relies on them being home when you aren't, and I don't fancy setting up a roster!

However putting myself in a burglars shoes, if there was a row of 10 houses, and 9 had alarms, I know which one I would rob... Not that I would or have, just saying.

Therefore with that perspective in mind, what puts off burglars?

difficulty getting in and out of the house
potential visibility frmo other houses
dogs
alarms

It is important to remember that seeing the alarm from outside is important, a hidden alarm isn't a deterrent.

If you want to catch the burglars, cameras are the better option with deterrents. There are now lots of security DVRs that will upload images to dropbox, and with ITTT (look it up in google) you can can get a smorgasboard of notifications.

HTH,

Jon

timmmay

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#702550 17-Oct-2012 15:15

That's a good summary of the whole alarm issue Jon. I'm working on the deterrant, keeping in mind the other factors, right now what I need help with is choosing an alarm.

Bosh will be good, but they're expensive at $2300 for a full fitout including GSM monitoring. Micron appear to have a good reputation, I'm seeing someone about them this week. There are plenty of cheap wireless alarms around, but I'd rather go for a wired alarm of reasonable quality.

I guess I'm just going to have to rely on sales people and my own gut.

mattwnz

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#702551 17-Oct-2012 15:15

jonherries: I figure the alarm thing is a deterrent. You are correct in the comment that a burglar will be "in and out" in 1/5/10 mins, so unless you live in a small town traffic will conspire with the burglar to make sure you are too late to get home in time to catch them.

The other thing with alarms is that they will be mains powered and also have a battery. So if they know where the alarm box is in the house (eg they were told by perhaps a tradesperson who worked in the house), they could turn off the alarm within a couple of minutes. If however it is hooked up to a monitoring system, that would probably activate once the alarm is fiddled with, so I think at least personally monitoring it with a dial out feature is something that should be done.

timmmay

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#702552 17-Oct-2012 15:17

One trick is turning off mains power and coming back a few days later. I plan to get around that by putting in a massive backup battery.

The Bosch alarms central units are in the ceiling space, so they're quite difficult to get to. Cheaper alarms have the control logic by the keypad, I imagine I could deal with one of those with a hammer in a few seconds.

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