On good neighbors, gun safes & alarm systems

[model 49 rick]

Had a break in at the house yesterday. Police called me at work from my home phone. My retired next door neighbor saw three YBM's come up my driveway, take a log from my woodpile, and proceed to smash a window at the back of my house. He got on to 911. In the 5 minutes it took the PD to respond they tossed 2 rooms. They were looking for guns specifically. My gun cabinets stood up to them. Nothing got taken, but they managed to escape. Detectives took plenty of good prints, and they will get warrants if their prints are in the system. One officer recommended Brinks for an alarm system. Anybody have any experiences with alarm systems they can share?

 

[NFrameFred]

Depends on the neighbors and how many false alarms have to be endured. Like the "Boy Who Cried Wolf", at least in my area, people have gotten so used to car alarms and burglar alarms going off accidentally they usually ignore them.

And as a long time FFL holder and NRA instructor, it's been my observation that a good percentage of folks buy their first safe AFTER they've been robbed the first time . . . .

Most burglaries are "smash and grab" with the actors grabbing what they can get quickly and carry easily. A gun safe won't even keep out a prepared, determined thief, but it will stop 99% of the smash and grab buttholes. An alarm connected to a central monitoring station like Brinks advertises is probably best, but wit a five minute or longer police response time that's not a great deterrent.

 

[M29since14]

Yes, they're a good idea, but watch the monitoring fees and terms of the contract. Your neighbors won't always be watching.

False alarms are a problem. Cops do not like responding and finding there is nothing for them to do. You can't blame them. Install one and go out of your way to debug it promptly if you discover any problems. There is bound to be a false alarm once in a great while. When I come out to let the police in for a look around, I always thank them and tell them their response in much appreciated. That seems to help, but the main thing is to keep the false alarms to an absolute minimum.

Some other thoughts. Hard-wired systems seem to be more reliable than wireless systems. I gather homeowners like the wireless ones better, for obvious reasons. You'll have to be the judge there. If you use motion sensors, you may be able to have two sensors watching the same area and sometimes the system will allow you to program it so that it alarms only if both sensors detect a problem. This can be helpful in avoiding false alarms that result from a deteriorating sensor, mice, etc. I suppose this could be a drawback if the sensors are not fail-safe, but I gather they all are... ? Fire detection sensors seem to be prone to this breakdown over time too, and I guess once the process starts, it is best to replace them all at once. Just some odds and ends I have learned over the years. Good luck.

 

[Super38]

We live out the the rural south, way out. We had Brinks for a while but have ADT now. ADT gave me a better deal than Brinks did to re-sign.
So far, not much difference. ADT seems to take a little longer to call when the alarm is set off. And any monitored system will attempt to contact YOU before they call the authorities.

As an example, when the system was first activated by ADT, out dog set off the motion detector, (after we were told that he certainly would not) ADT tried to call the house, my cell phone, the wife's cell, and the alternate phone. They did get the alternate, but he couldn't authorize anything and couldn't answer any questions since he was not near our house. Long and short of it is that ADT never did call the Sheriff's office. When I called and asked why not, they said something about missed communication BS.

It does give some peace of mind to me since I spend a good bit of time away from home. And the insurance discount is nice.

Shop around and ask for discounts. Watch out for hidden fees.

 

[Gamer]

Hate this happened, luckily for you the neighbor was watching and noticed the bad guys. +1 on a good gun safe, plus an alarm system and I would highly recommend both. If it were me, I would call several companies and get some estimates and go from there. I have noticed several of the major alarm companies offering what I’d refer to as teaser/starter packages. Cheap is not the way to go, look for full coverage. For example, my system has magnetic contact switches on all the doors, glass break detectors in several rooms, fire protection and motion detectors. It’s monitored by the company and calls instantly if triggered. To me a quality gun safe is my alarm backup if it were disabled or in the event of fire. As mentioned, a determined and experienced thief could likely help himself to my goodies. However, as I see it an alarm and safe will make it more difficult at least.

 

[rburg]

I have comments, as I always do.

First, get your alarm installed by someone who knows what he's doing. I used the guy who does our alarms here at work. Sure, he gave me a good price, but I also wanted some pretty unique stuff.

I disagree with the wireless comments. A professional grade wireless alarm is as good as wired. The cheap do-it-yourself ones could well be junk.

Think long and hard about including a firealarm or CO detector on your system. Most of the better alarm panels provide zones for that, but there are distinct drawbacks. If your panel sends out an alarm for either, you've got major damage. A false intrusion alarm will result in the now grumpy cop walking the perimeter. When the fire dept gets called, they come inside. They equip them with cool house wrecking tools and the training in how to destroy a door and its jam, along with any sidelights. A false alarm will cost you $1000 or maybe $1500.

As for how the system handles alarms, you have many options. Most the alarm company won't tell you about. First, everyone knows about the annunciator, sounder, call it what you please. Loud is good, louder is better. You can also put a strobe on the roof where everyone will be able to see where the alarm is going off. The panels all have dialers. They connect to your phone line. Copper wires that any thief worth his salt knows how to cut.

The panels usually have aux. outputs. Relays that can trip when the panel goes down. You can have them wired to a secondary dialer, some of which can use cell phone dialers. Pretty hard for even good thieves to defeat. Some will also call a succession of numbers, which could include your cell phone or pager, your wifes, the normal monitoring service, your neighbors, relatives, etc. Sure falsies annoy the people. Real alarms are good. You've got an instant party.

Think about your gun room. Motion detectors are great. But so is a sounder that will wake the dead. It gives the thieves something else to worry about. When he noise level exceeds a certain point, its hard to think or concentrate. Its also hard to find the source(s) of the noise.

False alarms are a pain. We had one last summer. We were across the river on an errand. I got the phone call on my cell, so I spun the car around and used the horsepower the way God had intended. We were 5 miles out, and a couple of lights. I still beat the cops. First to arrive was the bicycle cop. He came pedaling up the grade out of town, but I passed him. Someone or something had tripped my garage door opener. When the garage door opened, it dropped the door zone and the garage motion. Two zones down on an alarmed panel brings the troops, maybe just not fast.

Nothing was taken, but the garage door was wide open. A weakness in a system can be something other than an alarm fault. With us, it was some errant signal that caused the door to open.

Another thought. Those of us who like our stuff get upset with those who try to take it. When you're sound asleep and the thing goes off, you get up, grab your nightstand gun and flashlight, and head out. You can see from the keypad which zone(s) have the problem. Thats where you go. The monitoring service is a boring job, so middle of the night intrusions get attention.

When he asks is everything OK, of course you're on your way outside. So your wife answers NO, and then that you've gone to investigate. The minimum wage jerk on the phone has been trained in the far eastern or western states. Huddle in your bedroom and let them take what they want. BS. Go outside and stop it, right now.

So when he asked my wifey told him to dispatch the police. He had them and her on the line. The local PD wanted to know how to identify the homeowner (that would be me.) Wife, sharing my brutal honesty, just replied "he's the idiot in his underwear with a bright flashlight and a big gun!" Yes, that would be Dick. No, it wasn't a 380 or 38 special. It was a 44 Maggie, its got a laser on it, and a mad man behind the wheel. OK, the hair trigger is shared by the angry homeowner (that would be Dick, again.) Oh, I edit in the flashlight, a Surefire M6, the kind you can grill steaks on from 20 feet out.

 

[zercool]

When the fire dept gets called, they come inside. They equip them with cool house wrecking tools and the training in how to destroy a door and its jam, along with any sidelights. A false alarm will cost you $1000 or maybe $1500.

I'll quibble with this one. I've been on my fire department for seven years now and run more false alarms than I could ever hope to remember. We deal with them individually.

Come to your place once or maybe twice in a year because Ma burned the toast? No biggie, have a nice day.

Come to your place and no one is home but the alarm is sounding? We'll use due diligence, check everything we possibly can, but aren't going to force entry unless there's a real good reason. We'll wait for a keyholder for a reasonable amount of time, too.

We come to your place every couple days at 3am and there's no keyholder and no apparent cause for the alarm? At some point it's going to cost you. It may not even be physical damage - we made it real clear to the local mall management that we could and, more importantly, WOULD shut them down until their alarm system was operating at 100%. They had techs there within four hours.

Our protection area is our budget - they vote on our budget every year. If we run around breaking doors and windows just for kicks, we have people mad at us... and that doesn't do us any good at all.

Have I forced entry on a couple houses? Yep. Would I do it again? Of course. But we always try do it with minimum damage. I have yet to see a house that I can't get into for more than the cost of a screen and maybe a window latch, or a square of drywall and some paint.

 

[Half Scale]

I'm fairly new to the forum but thought i would respond because of past experiences.

I too live in a somewhat rural area and have experiences with the national brand name security companies. So..after talking with a lot of people i went with a smaller regional security provider. BEST DECISION I EVER MADE.

They are, like the others, on the job 24/7, but when the alarm goes off, the call the Sheriff's office immediately. Then they call the designated telephone numbers to see if it is a false alarm. Much easier for them to turn the police around than have then respond to a false alarm.

I've had mine set off 2 or 3 times because i left my cat in the shop and the Deputies have always beat me to the scene. I only live about 12 miles from work and at 80-90 MPH it don't take me long to get there.

The only bad thing about the police responding and checking everything out is the 2 hour "show and tell" session after they are there.

As Gamer stated, go with the magnetic door contacts, glass break sensors, smoke detectors, etc. Check with your insurance carrier too, mine gave a discount for a completely monitored system. They security company also discounts for quarterly or semi-annual advance payments. Between the insurance discount and semi annual payments the cost is minimal.

 

[Bullet Bob]

I live out in the middle of nowhere, neighbors aren't going to see anything. Heck, intruders probably gone before LE could get there if somebody did suspect something. Here's the security system I went with:

Here's his backup:

Seriously, anything can be defeated, including old Scout. But a big dog barking from inside the house will at least give lowlifes a moment of reflection. It sounds like the original poster has the best system, good neighbors.

 

[zak98]

have a monitored system in my house. installed by security company as house was being built. chose wired system over wireless system. i thought the changing of batteries for all the contacts would drive me nuts as they all started to need batteries. so wired.. but does monitor fire and CO.

my insurance co. gave me a 12% break on policy price because of monitored system.

monitoring about $22/month.

battery backup incase power failure.

they say you should test the system once a month by calling the monitoring service and letting them know you are going to set off alarm for test. but we seem to set it off about once every 2 months on accident (or our cats set off the motion sensor in one of the rooms)

just wanted to offer my 2 cents.

 

[jag312]

When an alarm activates, the signal is transmitted to the alarm company over telephone lines. For the less expensive alarm systems, if you cut the telephone line outside the house, the alarm company never gets the signal. The best alarm systems send a test signal to the house like every three seconds. If the test signal is returned, then everything is okay. If the test signal is not returned, or if an alarm signal is sent, then the alarm company notifies the police to investigate.

One of my friends keeps his guns in a safe in a locked room. In his living room he has a very prominant gun cabinet. In that gun cabinet are an assortment of old, junk, single barrel break-open shotguns and some old junk .22 rifles. He says the most he paid for one of the guns was $25. The rest were considerably cheaper. These are the sacrificial guns. He reasons that if a thief breaks into his house, the first thing that the thief will see is the gun cabinet. The thief will grab the guns in the cabinet and run. Total loss: maybe less than $100.

 

[oldRoger]

I have my phone line buried and it enters through the foundation so that it would be necessary to trace it and dig for it. The phone comp. box is mounted inside as well. Downside is if there is a problem w/phone you must have someone give phone tech access.

I am back-up for neighbors who spend summers north, in my experience the false alarms at both houses are windows, 80 mph winds and everything goes off..
I have motion detectors and door sensors, it works here. The only fire alarms here hooked to the central system are heat sensors; the toast has to be very burned to trigger them.

 

[rburg]

Originally posted by zercool:
I'll quibble with this one. I've been on my fire department for seven years now and run more false alarms than I could ever hope to remember.

It depends on the protocol in your area and for the department. Where I live, they feel it necessary to enter. I don't have the fire or CO monitor because of it. When we moved to this house I was good friends with the captain at the nearest firehouse. He suggested I not install those two items for the reasons I gave.

He had examples of neighbors who had the damage done. They had the zones removed after their first incident. While their insurance paid for the damage, it was significant.

 

[deralte]

If you have an empty house near you, you may want to contact that Horn fellow from Texas. He is without a doubt the best neighbor I've heard of.

 

[Modelof1891]

Hello All,

I have enjoyed a very nice system by Front Point Security . It is a wireless system that uses cell. Can be made custom for motion, windows, door sensors, fire / smoke, video, lights on and off, freeze warning and more. Tracking can be done from your cell phone or on-line. Gives notice of SYSTEM On and SYSTEM Off, the time, whos remote and so on. It sends a signal as soon as the system is opened and if no other signal comes in, they send the law anyway. Otherwise you can open the door and turn it off by your code at the control panel or by the remote.
Monitoring starts at 32.00, I think. Very nice people!!
If you have any questions I will be glad to answer by email.

 

[jaegan]

I can only speak to my personal experience, but I have very little faith in the monitored systems. I routinely receive calls from people near an alarm well before receiving the "official" call from the alarm company. For my own use, I'm fond of alarm systems that can be programmed to call me first, and have very loud audible alarms attached. Dogs are good too, but I've never been able to teach one to call my cell phone.

 

[model 49 rick]

Thank You all,

I have an appointment with Brinks. I cannot go with motion detectors due to pets, but will get the breakage & open monitors on all windows and doors. The detective I spoke to says they are the best in this area. He also said smash & grabbers (most residential burglaries) almost never try to cut the phone lines. They'd have to be pretty tall, or have a serious ladder to get mine anyway.