Thread: Alarms for the house advice needed

The weiner dog alarm company at my house works just fine, a 15 pound dog with a 45 pound bark. They have very good hearing and are very territorial. Their bark gets me up pretty damn quick.

The benefit to little dogs is a smaller food bill and little bitty turds, Had an Irish setter as a kid, he left moose sized turds.

Originally Posted by coop44

The weiner dog alarm company at my house works just fine, a 15 pound dog with a 45 pound bark. They have very good hearing and are very territorial.

Plus if things get REALLY bad, they go great with a little mustard and a bun!

If thing gots really bad, my neighbors wouldn't be safe. Yum long pork.

A friend of mine in Indiana had his house broken into yesterday by three crooks. I guess they used some concrete blocks to back his akita into a room and shut the door and the lhasa apso just ran and hid. Fortunately, the guys neighbors got in on the action and held one of the perps at gun point while another chased the car for a while. Cops rounded them all up.

Dogs are good deterrents but an experienced criminal will know how to deal with them.

Originally Posted by coop44

If thing gots really bad, my neighbors wouldn't be safe. Yum long pork.

Be sure to eat the vegans first. They eat what food eats.

Originally Posted by coop44

The weiner dog alarm company at my house works just fine, a 15 pound dog with a 45 pound bark. They have very good hearing and are very territorial. Their bark gets me up pretty damn quick.

The benefit to little dogs is a smaller food bill and little bitty turds, Had an Irish setter as a kid, he left moose sized turds.

We have the same alarm company. Two weiner dogs. The female will go nuts if you so much as cut a loud fart, but I know ever time if someone is even walking by on the sidewalk. The male would help a thief cart off the big screen for a treat.

The dog alarm is your best bet for a deterrent. Keeps the lesser honest people more scared. Still extremely easy to bypass. Don't think your dog is going to prevent anything... (with a very few rare exceptions)

A house alarm for preventing or catching a burglar is just not going to happen. An alarm is just going to make them think about leaving earlier.

An important bit to remember is your alarm system has to communicate with your monitoring station/police/responders via a couple ways.
1. Phone lines
2. Internet
3. Cellular
4. Radio frequency

#1 & #2 are most easily bypassed by someone simply cutting your utility provider connection, such as comcast, quest, frontier etc.... Don't think because your line is behind your fence, or padlocked it's safe. a good they'd cuts it before they even walk inside. Also contrary to popular belief is the notion that the monitoring company will know IF your phone line is cut, simply not true unless you have a backup mode of communication. You may have onsite notification however.

#3 is easily defeatable with a standard cell phone jammer for $30. Common cellulars use AT&T edge network for the transmission.

#4 is defeatable much like #3 but with more skill and knowledge required. Most people that install such things wouldn't know how to jam this transmission much less the average homeowner.

That being said, the alarms provide some very distinct and valuable advantages that most people overlook. In no particular order...
1. Fire protection. If you have an alarm put at least one smoke detector on it. By the time your neighbors see smoke and call the fire dept most is already lost.
2. Duress protection. Someone waits for you and forces you inside to disarm the alarm system. You enter a code that disarms it AND sends a silent panic. (Columbia sportswear CEO incident ring a bell?)
3. Medical emergencies. Yes the typical slip and fall situation for the elderly but there's also wandering patient devices that activate when they get too far from the receiver.
4. Notification. A monitoring station can coordinate with emergency response to ensure proper action is taken. Such as requests to save animals, or people with medical conditions, or anything else that requires special instructions. I've seen this alone save lives. Also you can have instructions to send out text messages to your kids warning them before they get home before you, and potentially walking into a confrontation situation.
5. Water detection. Water heater breaks and starts dumping water. Yes you have a floor drain but have actually tested it for full volume flow of water. Not likely. With a water detector and electronic valve on you water main, it'll shut it off automatically. Saving the homeowner insurance deductible at minimum is worth this alone.

I could go on and on and on about the many benefits, and would be happy to if asked. Just don't believe it's fool proof, and especially don't believe it's going to "catch" them.

Remember a great system poorly installed and poorly monitored isnt worth a damn. Be careful to ensure proper operation, testing, and maintenance.

Oh lastly, your monitoring station, be it ACS, CSM, Pro 1, ADT, etc... Are only as good as the instructions you give them. That being said, all are not created equall. There are more than a few of them to avoid....

Who am I to give you this info?
A guy with 10+ years experience locally, I currently teach for the oregon state licensing limited energy program and write curriculum as well. I've not seen and heard it all but a pretty good big chunk of it. I'll be happy to help anyone who wants it.

A little side note if you go with one of the major alarm companies such as ADT, etc. Read the contract carefully. You will find that you may think you are signing a one year contract and they will probably present it that way. What they don't tell you is that after the first year the contract evergreens. In other words if you don't specifically tell them you don't want to be under further contract you will automatically be obligated to another year of service. I lucked out as when I started my service they had an option where for a few bucks more a month, it was month to month service that you could (supposedly) cancel at any time. They stopped offering that option.

I remember I tried to cancel my Brinks service when I became dissatisfied with it and I actually had to write the Oregon Atty. Generals office to complain when Brinks repeatedly refused to let me cancel my service. They try to get you to talk to one of their "customer care" specialist who's job it is to guilt you into keeping your service by painting nightmare scenarios of what might happen if you cancel or saying things like "So you don't care about your family's safety.".

Just so you know, I'm not making this up. I worked for Brinks for a very short and miserable time. Even though they have been absorbed by ADT, they both operated the same way.

My home was burged once... had an alarm etc neighbors ignored the alarm & cops came hours later. Then I got a hundred pound mutt and have no worries. People seem to notice more a large dog bouncing off the window..Flash forward to about a month ago I guy came to my door when we were not home knocked on the door dog went ballistic he went around the corner and broke in to someone elses house because my dog was going apey all eyes were on him and was arested leaving resiedence.If I did not have the big dog I gurantee he would of broke in to my house instead of the one that did not.

Originally Posted by Untamo

I could go on and on and on about the many benefits, and would be happy to if asked.

To any of you folks in the business:

Realistically, it seems like the best reason to have dogs and an alarm is to make hitting your place more difficult and risky for a thief than it would be to hit someone else's place. So...

If you already have dogs and an alarm is there another effective deterrent that should be considered too?

Years ago we were told by the alarm company that cutting the phone line would up the charges to "felony" status if the guy was caught, so the smarter criminals avoid doing that (they move on to an easier target, or do a quick grab and go rather than hanging around while the alarm is going off). Any comments on that one?

Originally Posted by Untamo

Also contrary to popular belief is the notion that the monitoring company will know IF your phone line is cut, simply not true unless you have a backup mode of communication. You may have onsite notification however.

This is actually false...alarm companies now "ping" alarms to ensure the line hasn't been cut (usually every 30 seconds). If there is no reply back (i.e. the line is cut or there is a loss of power) a "trouble alarm" is activated and sent to the dispatcher. What people fail to realize about alarms is that there are many different types of alarms just as there are many types of receivers. Just to name the alarms that I know of- fence shaker, motion sensor, glass breakage, loss of power, loss of communication, timeout (code entered, but not in allotted time or doors/windows not secured within allotted time), expired code, invalid entry/access (someone without clearance passed a card reader but card did not read properly or it was not a recognized card) and invalid access (someone with a card reader not having sufficient access to enter specific area).

Off course, some alarm systems are now pressure, noise, light and motion sensitive...cool stuff. They even make DVRs that record all the time but compress the information that has no movement...great for prisons/jails that have to have cameras recording all the time but don't have unlimited storage for the information recorded.

Originally Posted by Riot

This is actually false...alarm companies now "ping" alarms to ensure the line hasn't been cut (usually every 30 seconds). If there is no reply back (i.e. the line is cut or there is a loss of power) a "trouble alarm" is activated and sent to the dispatcher.

I'm going to attempt to respond as diplomatically as I can, but responses like this aggravate me to no end and I spend too much time correcting this type of thing. That being said the statement is accurate, in a certain type of situation. Let's examine...

The "ping" command that's being referenced only applies to data based communications. Much like a ping command from the old DOS days. (and those of you that still use the command prompt.) For that command to generate an alarm a few things have to happen.

An Ethernet or GSM type communicator is enrolled in a 3rd party service typically. The signal must go through the utility, to the 3rd party, then finally retransmitted to your monitoring center. This happens nearly instantly, and most digital devices have a "check-in" time of anywhere from 60 seconds to up to 24 hours. This check-in is simply an acknowledgment of a request from the 3rd party service. THEN if there is no response from the Ethernet/cell unit, the 3rd party generates a "trouble" signal that is then sent to your monitoring center. This is where action can vary wildly... You monitoring center takes action according to it's procedures. So you monitoring center may do a few things.
1. Simply log the info
2. Send notice to the servicing/installation company
3. Notify responsible party for the premise
4. All or part of the above.

That being with a data communicator. With a land line, it gets worse.

Your phone line provides a 48-52V reference. Your alarm panel will most likely have a "telephone line monitor" feature that measures the voltage on this line every 60 seconds or more. If the voltage drops a "trouble" is generated at your alarm keypad, and IF you have a backup means of communication, such as a GSM, it will transmit that signal. IF you don't have a backup, it won't transmit that trouble signal until phone line is restored. However IF your alarm panel SOLELY uses a phone line for transmittal to your monitoring center, once the line is cut, you're out of luck. Why, because your alarm panel essentially makes a phone call to transmit it's signals. No dial tone, no transmission.

Now you might think, "but if I lose telephone service my alarm company would know it, right?" - Wrong. If your alarm panel doesn't transmit to the monitoring center something is wrong, they won't know.

The only way your monitoring center may know something is wrong is if your phone line only alarm panel missed it's check-in time, or called test signal. Things like commercial FIRE ALARMS are required to check in via phone lines every 24 hours. Residential fire alarms/burg alarms are not required to check in, ever. (Some jurisdictions may vary.) that being said an alarm company SHOULD have the system dial in periodically. Usually a monthly minimum is standard, while better companies go with weekly checkins. Daily checkins are usually available for an additional fee and are NOT the norm in the industry.

Let's say your alarm panel is telephone line only, set to check in once weekly. It may take up to 168 hours before your alarm company even has a hint that something could be wrong. For you, the customer, a set of steps must happen for this to be of any use. Here they are, in order.

1. The installing technician must have programmed your alarm panel to do a periodic check in.
2. The time and frequency of the checking must be conveyed to the monitoring center.
3. The monitoring center must have software that recognizes a missed check in. (almost all do)
4. That software must be setup to notify a representative on their screen, NOT setup for log only.
5. That representative must take appropriate action. (some just notify the service company, some just log it and see if it missed the next checkin, some on a bad day just clear it)
6. Then you must be notified and able to take appropriate action to repair the line. You must determine if it's a phone company issue, or within your home. How long to repair, etc....

This is just to illustrate the process, because in short, it may be a minimum of 24 hours, up to NEVER before your monitoring center even has the POSSIBILITY to respond. Good installation, and good procedures are key. So saying the alarm company WILL know is not entirely accurate.

Also, off topic, the whole "cut phone line = felony" stuff might be applicable in some jurisdictions, but it doesn't matter one lick if you don't catch em.

This isn't meant to be a deterrent from monitored alarms, just an FYI and reality check there is more involved and many factors that influence how these systems work.

Here's the line of thinking you should have. Its not IF someone can get in, but when... And how quickly do you want them to leave. Use safes for valuables, password protect computers even use tracking software, or even hardware. Best yet, properly disguise your most important items with hidden stashes. Combine that with a loud blaring siren or 10, and a dog(s) in the house, with nothing readily accessible, it should be enough to make them want to leave.

It all doesn't matter though, if you don't arm the system, lock the safe, or kennel your dog. Develop good habits.

I have had systems at two houses. Basically had a threat against my wife.
Did intial one throught a local agency. Basically happy with it. Ended up with wireless. So it was piece of mind fro my wife. They did respond to a couple of false alarms quickly.
When we moved here - we installed the system - Used glass break, motion sensing, etc technology. Had problems everytime Comcast did service on the system at 2:00Am the center would get a call for no signal.
Less inclined to believe that hvaing a service will do much. But do like having a system( MAy do it without the service in the future with a big horn).
Do believe the alarm horn is a deterrant.
Do not believe that police will come anytime soon - So why have a service?
I do like knowing everytime a door or window is opened - chimes. ( With kids it is great).
But fundamentally - I have focused more on securing the house better to make it moredifficult to get in. And placing valuables in remote places.

I have an alarm system
I have a safe
I have a dog
I have good neighbors (friends) who will respond to the alarm.
I work at home.
When we go on vacation, a friend house sits and takes care of the dog, and brings her dog with her too.

For when you're home, I read on another forum a great idea of keeping your car keys near you at all times, and if your car has a key fob with an alarm on it, to push the alarm button when you want some attention. Flashing lights on your car and the alarm blaring tends to make folks stick their heads out the windows, especially at night. Since prowlers don't like attention, it's another tool in your toolbox. Of course, in my household, I now have my cell phone on its charger next to my bed, and my pants from the day before still carrying my keys, flashlight (redundancy for the light hanging on the bedpost,) and sidearm very handy. I have a couple dogs who will chase something loudly, not knowing what to do with it, but they have plenty keen hearing for anyone around the house, regardless of the time of day or night, and are a general purpose indicator of anyone coming around, friend or foe. Almost annoying at times, but dogs are a package deal anyway.