Lock advice for new house

[Jlo]

Many Thanks for all the advice!

It looked a very study door when I looked round but we are going in to measure up so will have a good look.

If I was in London or another very high risk area and the front door was the main and only access I may even invest in one of these http://www.steelsecuritydoors.co.uk/www ... _doors.asp

but as you said the house I am buying as a patio door with toughened glass only, wooden windows so there are really 2 many weak points of access.

Hoever I will make it secure as I can

With regards the alarm:

Almost went with ADT or a company with police resonse (Confirmed technology and all that) but then shoudl I go for Dualcom, Red care??

In fact I have taken a gamble and bought the BT home monitor alarm (But off a ebay distrubter for £79.99) with 3 wireless sensors etc. Its Powermax equipment which seems reasonable. Its self monitoring- if there is an alarm it rings the house first- if no code entered it contacts key holder one by phone, text, e mail, then key holder 2 etc.

The thing I like is it text you which sensors have been triggored so if the living room and dining room pirs have been triggored then you have a fair idea its not false alarm.

The whole lot cost me £100 (With a dummy box extra) and my mate bought one and fitted and works well.

If I am not satified I will go back to the Nasoss monitored alarm setting me back near £30 month.

Cheers

Jlo

[DaveAG]

Well, I pity the burglar that comes across your home at this rate. Bear in mind though that even with a steel door, pick,bump, and drill resistant locks, and steel grilles over all the glass you can find, a truly determined theif will get in, even more so if they are convinced you must have something worth protecting so much.

I can just imaging coming back off holiday to find that your wall has a 6 foot by 4 foot hole in it, and all your expensive stuff is missing. After all, its probably easier to smash your way through two layers of brick than it is to get through that titan steel door.

Have you considered buying an old bank for your next house? It seems their vaults (with a little money spent on them) may just be coming up to your desired security level.

[Jlo]

HE HE,

I like the bank vault idea LOL

Cheers

Jlo

[vector40]

Gotta figure out what your goal is. A lot of people seem to be imagining these systems as protecting against entry while you're not home for an extended period of time (for which a good set of hardware and an alarm with a guaranteed response time are probably the way to go), but there are other possibilities, such as protecting you while you're home. "Security" can mean a lot of things.

[gazzaull25]

hi regarding the alarm system i would recomend going for a hard wired systems for a number of resons 1 you dont get load of false activations
2 you dont have to change batterys because if they start going dead thats when the fun starts
3 there are wired free and work of radio freq and can be jammed
the system u have works off ur phone line if it gets cut you still dont know when its going off!!
no phone line no texts etc.
i would go for a veritas r8 with a vocaliser which rings you up etc but you can a micrphone on the system so you hear if theres out going on etc
and also you can have a smoke alarm wired to the system,a viper (vibration decter) it put on upvc french doors or windows!!!
a panic button, pressure mats the list is endless!!!
pet pir so you can still set the system with ur dog inside etc!!
there is also a bit of gear you can have wired to the system that works when a window gets smashed it reconises the sound and sets it off
but red care and duelcom are mainly for commercial propertys

ps on police responce there is a ten minute bell delay so no ringing noise and in that time the police havent turned up and ur house is empty

have fun

[Jlo]

Hi,

I have heard of bell delays but i think that is governed by the local police force regulations for monitored alarms.

I don't think that counts everywhere but I could be wrong.

My Mum and Dad has a Nascoss aproved company fit an alarm and they fitted class 3 wireless (FM Electroncs kit) which they are very pleased.

I have read up reviews and since I have already bought the Powermax kit I will give it a go. Its 4 hourley supervised (If a detector fails it will be registered) and you even get a text message when one of the batteries are low.

I have been along to some of the secuirty forum and I know a lot of people really frown on wireless but I know 3 people with Yale wirelss kits who have been very happy, My Mum and dads don't false alarm so I think they have improved.

But I do agree with you if there is a choice and no cost implication then wired is the best way to go.

Cheers

Jlo

[mh]

With regards the alarm:
...
In fact I have taken a gamble and bought the BT home monitor alarm (But off a ebay distrubter for £79.99) with 3 wireless sensors etc. Its Powermax equipment which seems reasonable. Its self monitoring- if there is an alarm it rings the house first- if no code entered it contacts key holder one by phone, text, e mail, then key holder 2 etc.
...

Jlo,

I can 100% relate to your desire to put the best protection on your home - same with me: There's not much inside here that would be attractive to burglars, but because it's my hobby, I just like to protect the house with good locks, an alarm system, etc.

Based on that, it's only natural that I tried a lot of alarm systems already
Started with wiring my parents' house with a cheap no-name system designed & made in Taiwan, then an existing wired system in U.K., a wired system back in Germany, a wireless system in the U.S. and now finally a high end wired system back in Germany.

And I had quite some bad experiences:
The taiwanese no-name system just simply had a lot of false alarms which couldn't be explained.
A wireless smoke detector (made by DSC) failed after 6 months and signalled smoke where there was none.
A wireless PIR (made by DSC) had 1 false alarm after 12 months. Very annoying, because we were just a 2 hours drive away and decided to go back...

Now I use only VdS approved equipment (VdS is the German organization that tests security equipment for insurance purposes)
which I believe has less false alarms; I also only use dual-system motion detectors (PIR & microwave), again to reduce false alarms.

And I don't like wireless systems, because of the theoretical possibility that an intruder a) jams & thereby disables it or b) jams & triggers it repeatedly with everybody else assuming that it's 'just another false alarm'.
It's unlikely, but if you want to go for the best solution...

With regard to the 'self monitoring feature' of your system - I hope you hid the panel well, and it doesn't have a built-in siren, otherwise you could expect an intruder to rip the panel from the wall, cut the wires etc. immediately. And then it's maybe still just calling the home and not your cell phone yet.

As for the phone line - just in case you want to upgrade your system later to GSM backup - there are GSM dialers on the market that you can put between your phone line and your alarm system, and if the phone line is down, it will re-route the call through the GSM network. Nice technology Not cheap, but ebay might be your friend

Cheers,
Michael

[Jlo]

Hi,

Thanks for the excellent Post Michael. With the BT monitoring system http://www.shop.bt.com/icat/homemonitoring the box only has to comunitcate out once (And its silent dialing) and then its the REMOTE monitoring service that rings back and escalates to keyholders- NOT the box on the wall so unless you are very quick ripping the phone cord out then I should still receive the alert.

Sorry for going a bit off topic as I guess we shoud focus on locks (Buts its kinda of fun!)

Interested to hear about the German VDS aproval. PM me any links you have to alarm sites over in Germany. Would be interested to have a look.

Cheers

Jlo