House Alarm System

antoinolachtnai

I've just had the house robbed and it's made a right mess. It appears that people with alarms are considerably less likely to get robbed on this street than people without. Therefore, I have resolved to invest in an alarm system.

What's the best way of doing this, and how much might it cost? it's a 3-bed terraced house.

Are eircom phonewatch any good?

What about buying a kit from a place in the UK like Quicksafe?

Are 'wireless' alarms good enough, or do is there a real benefit in hard-wiring it?

Is there anybody who will install a system that will dial a preconfigured number to say there's been a break-in?

DIY might be fine, but I'm prepared to pay the money to get the right system while I'm at it.

Pataman

I have installed several alarms for friends, own house etc, The easiest way, if your house is not prewired, is to get a wireless alarm. I am told the batteries in the detectors last 2/3 years before they need replacing. I dont know the cost, I havent done an alarm in a couple of years. If you want to cennect it to a central station it must be installed by a qualified person to IS199. You can get diy jobbies which you can connect to an autodialer which will ring you at several numbers with a message.

Bad luck on the house robbery, been there too.

antoinolachtnai

If you get an NSAI approved crowd, it seems that you also get a discount of around 10 percent on the house insurance. This is worth around 60 eur/year to me.

You can also get the alarm monitored, and this gives an extra 5 percentage points of discount.

Can anybody recommend an NSAI-approved installer?

Jnealon

The wireless can be good but it is fairly expensive. I always recommend a wired alarm except in extreme circumstances where wires can't be run. In that case I would use a hybrid panel (Aritech or Europlex) that take a mix of wired and wireless. In a 3 bed house I would defnitely use a wired alarm. Any good installer should be able to hide the wires