Wired alarm - what are my options

FrankGrimes

Hi, long time observer, first time poster, renovating my house at the moment and the time has come to choose an alarm system, and the other alarm threads don’t quite answer my questions.

My mate has done a course in alarm fitting and fits them as nixers and will be fitting it for free. The girlfriend’s brother was the electrician and wired up as told by my mate – wires for contacts on all windows and external doors and two PIRs (passive infra-red) in strategic positions.

Thing is, my mate seems to just install bog standard alarm systems and doesn’t know much about the other options out there and I want to know what my options are: he mentioned getting some shock detecting contacts on the windows downstairs – can anyone recommend these and would it be worth using these upstairs aswell?

I have another electrician friend (original electrician is now abroad) who gets very good discounts at the electrical wholesaler and will get me the gear if I tell him exactly what I want (again he is not well up on alarms).

So I’d really appreciate it if someone could tell me what options there are in terms of the actual control unit etc. Are diallers anymore difficult to install than normal systems and are the much more expensive? We don’t plan on having a landline so a GSM dialler would be best, but if this is too expensive we would consider a landline dialler for sell-on potential down the road.

Hope I’ve made this all clear and thanks for any help,
Grimesy

Stoner

Hi Grimesy,
I work for an M&E electrical contractor. Also being from a good old decent working class part of dublin I have had alarms for about 15 years.
Aritec sensors are the industry standard, most of the good security contractors use them.
My advice to you would be to get a decent company to second fix the alarm, you can save a few bob by wiring the system yourself, but the one off guys usually dont want to know (or have moved away from alarms and have forgotten how to maintain them) thing is you will need to keep it maintained and every now and then you may need a sensor moved etc and you cant get the guy back. There are new regs now about the conditions under which the cops will call to your house, mainly due to the number of dodgy alarms out there.
Shock sensors upstairs are very good. you have to look at the type of window you have, if only one window opens (one large window, for the back of the house where most break ins happen) it is usually best to fit a vibration and open closed type contact to the window and leave the window closed at night, you can leave it at the shock sensor so you can leave the window open , but its not really as secure. If you are lucky enough to have a small opening window and a large window then you can fit this combi contact to the large window and leave the small window open at night.
Make sure you fit a couple of PIR movement detectors too, like i said there are new regs, you will have a better chance of the cops coming to the rescue if the panel sends out alarms from two sensors and not just the old football off the window one.
Anyway my advice, get an established company to do it, or at least check it and maintain it.