The Importance of Reliability
Almost every street has a nosey neighbour; someone who is at the front window at any strange noise or event out of the ordinary. But even these people can learn to ignore an unreliable alarm system, as would you. If someone’s alarm is always going off then you just learn to ignore it, and local burglars know that if they target that house it’s highly unlikely they’ll get caught.
The Importance of Appearance
Also from the outside an intruder can only see your Bellbox, and this will give him a good idea as to the age and condition of your alarm system. We’ve seen bell boxes hanging off walls, we’ve even seen boxes that are so rusty and old looking that there’s every chance they won’t work, we’ve even seen bell boxes fed with a cable that has been tacked up the wall.
Get your Alarm System Serviced
I cant express enough on the importance of at least getting your alarm system checked over and serviced by an approved company every year (most home insurance companies require evidence that your alarm is maintained by an approved company), if you cant afford that then at the very least every 3 – 4 years because by then the systems backup batteries will almost have come to the end of there lifespan. If its been regularly serviced and maintained then your system should give you many trouble free years of service, but I would suggest you still think about getting it fully upgraded every 15 years or so.
Getting your alarm serviced and fully tested on a regular basis is a wise investment in your alarm system, an annually maintained system is proven to be much more reliable than one which isn’t, I don’t understand why but so many people have an alarm installed and then expect it to run trouble free for the rest of its lifetime, it just doesn’t work that way and this catches so many of you out.
The average house alarm system only takes about an 40 minutes to service (about 1 hour with a cup of tea), the engineer will check the Control panel, detector, Bellbox and battery supply voltages and current draws, backup batteries to ensure a minimum 12 hour backup capacity (these are recommended to be replaced every 5 years), Monitoring if installed (monitored alarms would normally be serviced every 6 months anyway), clean and walk test all the detectors (walktest), Test bell boxes, sirens and speakers, and finally test the alarm system is functioning correctly (full-set/part-set & alarm). You of course would be advised of any faults found, and be given suggestions for remedies or replacement parts as required.
Help maintain reliability:
- You should always inform your service company about any un-explained false alarms.
- Be Honest with your engineer, if you have caused a fault (e.g. Tamper), then tell him.
- If during a service the engineer finds faults, either let him sort it straight away or arrange for repairs ASAP.
- Always consider any suggestions for improvement to your current security.