Alarm being set off by burglars?

SamBrugha

Anyone in the Knocklyon, Firhouse, Rathfarnham area (or anywhere in dublin) having a similar situation?

My house alarm has been set off 3 times in the space of a week. each time my alarm says one of the two front downstairs windows have been the trigger. our alarm is sensitive enough that if a ball hit the window it would set it off. its been happening around the hours of 130am to 4am.

and before you say the alarm may be faulty its never given us any trouble like this before, its always left on for many hours during the day and has never gone off, and we always turn it on at night and usually no bother.

There has been an enormous amount of break ins in the area in the past few months, I wonder if anyone else is experiencing or has experienced a similar situation?

John Kelly of

If you have the engineer code then enter zone menu and change the sensitivity for that zone from gross 3 to gross 4 and it might do the trick. Default engineer code is likely 1278 for this system. If it still happens or if you don't have the engineer code then next port of call might be to change the sensors on that zone.
If it's less than a year and you paid someone to change those sensors already then they should help you out without charging much if anything.

KoolKid

It's still possible you have a faulty sensor or contact on that zone. A potential burglar is more likely to set it off a couple of times in the one night rather than coming back different days.
There a a number of things that can cause false alarms at certain times. A proper check of the resistance on this zone will tell you a lot.

SamBrugha

so when it said "alarm front zone G=3" is that the level of attack upon the window at the time or is that just telling me what the window sensitivity level is set to?

KoolKid

Its the level of force it thinks its seeing.
3 is too low. Windows should be set to 4 or 5 . Changing the settings may solve it but I'd recommend checking that zone either way.

SamBrugha

i went out myself today and flicked the window banged the window and the alarm went off at G=5. did it again harder and it came up G=6... so whatever is setting it off at night is a 3. the window cills are very thin so im a little resistant to the idea perhaps a cat could be setting off the alarm, plus we have a dog in the back yard and cats usually steer clear of our house.

any ideas?

KoolKid

SamBrugha wrote: »

any ideas?

3 Is too low, The settings need to be adjusted either way.
Also as this has only started it may also be a faulty device.
Check the resistance on that zone.

fred funk }{

If your alarm has been fine and suddenly it's false alarming then it's highly likely a sensor has gone faulty.

Mr. G

SamBrugha wrote: »

Anyone in the Knocklyon, Firhouse, Rathfarnham area (or anywhere in dublin) having a similar situation?

My house alarm has been set off 3 times in the space of a week. each time my alarm says one of the two front downstairs windows have been the trigger. our alarm is sensitive enough that if a ball hit the window it would set it off. its been happening around the hours of 130am to 4am.

and before you say the alarm may be faulty its never given us any trouble like this before, its always left on for many hours during the day and has never gone off, and we always turn it on at night and usually no bother.

There has been an enormous amount of break ins in the area in the past few months, I wonder if anyone else is experiencing or has experienced a similar situation?

Just a note OP, this is something I know has happened to people where intruders set the alarm off and make it look like a false alarm, and then the owners leave the house with the alarm unset. They then take all they can without any alarm going off as its not set. Its something that has become more and more common, and what's more insurance companies won't pay out if it wasn't set.

KoolKid

I agree, however this usually happens over a single day or night rather than days or weeks.
Also agree re leaving the alarm off.
The best advice here is getting that zone checked either way. As he says it is activating on G3. That's too sensitive regardless.

Theta

We had something similar happening in the house and the actual problem was absolutely comical.

A breeze or latent heat from the rads at night was causing the toggle on the pull cord of the blinds to sway in the wind and tap off the shock sensor on the window frame which triggered it.

Took us a few days to figure it out.

SamBrugha

ive set the alarm to a 4, hopefully it wont go off again. thanks for all the replies guys!

KoolKid

SamBrugha wrote: »

ive set the alarm to a 4, hopefully it wont go off again. thanks for all the replies guys!

Have you checked that zone for faulty devices?

SamBrugha

KoolKid wrote: »

Have you checked that zone for faulty devices?

i rang the man who installed our alarm her just walked me thru changing the level, never mentioned anything about checking that zone.. Im not even sure how to

altor

SamBrugha wrote: »

i rang the man who installed our alarm her just walked me thru changing the level, never mentioned anything about checking that zone.. Im not even sure how to

You will need a multimeter to do this.

Remove the resistor from the last device on the zone and connect the wires to the last device.
Sometimes the resistor is in the control panel so just remove this and connect the cable ends from that zone to the multimeter.
Set the meter to 200 Ohms and take a note of the reading.
Each device you have on that zone you will need to tap the sensor plus open and close each contact one by one.
After each one, check if the reading has changed.
If it does not return to in or around the same value remove that device, join the cables from the alarm circuit together and move on to the next device.
After this you should have a circuit with a lower resistance value that remains the same after you tap or open any device.
Replace any faulty devices plus replace the EOL resistor and rewire the zone back into the panel.

KoolKid

Bear in mind that in some instances it may be necessary to tap each sensor 10-20 times if nothing is showing up as faulty. If your connecting the meter at the last device it needs to be connected in series with that device so that unit can be tested ad well.

altor

If you do connect the meter in series with the last device then make sure you disconnect the zone in the control panel plus any resistors on the loop and join the cable together there.