Making Sure Your Security System Works for You

When it comes to securing your home or business, few measures provide as efficient and effective security as a monitored security system. These alarms create a siren response upon activation that lets you — and anyone who tries to break in — know that someone’s been caught in the act. Additionally, a monitored alarm also creates a response from our central station. This means that you and anyone you want to know will receive notice of the alarm. Furthermore, our central station can dispatch the proper authorities upon activation as well. This adds multiple layers of valuable security to any home or business. In order to keep this security working as efficiently as possible, we offer several tips and tricks to keep your security equipment ready to work for you. Today, we share some alarm maintenance tips to help reach our goal of making sure your security system works for you at all times!

First, we’ll show you how keeping up with “housekeeping” around your alarm equipment can go a long way towards maintaining proper alarm performance. From there, we’ll review the process for testing your alarm. This will include tips on both testing sensors as well as testing its monitoring capabilities. Finally, we’ll shift our focus to our extended warranty programs. These options help you keep your alarm running while keeping away unexpected repair costs. Obviously, this combination goes a long way in making sure your security system works for you when you need it most. Now, let’s dive in with a look at proper security system equipment care.

Keeping Alarm Components Free from Debris

Keeping your alarm sensors clean goes a long way towards ensuring proper system operation. We pointed out in our post about Security System Monitoring how many customers fear false alarms. Not all of these customers realize that keeping sensors clean — especially motion detectors — greatly lowers the chance of a false alarm. Most motion sensors detect motion by sensing changes in the amount of heat in a room. Dirt, dust, or grime getting inside the detector can provide a change in heat and create a false alarm. Spiders or insects crawling inside detectors can also create this same response.

Check your system contacts for accumulated dirt and dust regularly, and clean the areas around them if needed. Sensors installed in basements and garages get especially dirty very quickly, so give those extra attention. Maintaining your security devices will both help prevent false alarms and help keep your sensors in good working order for as long as possible. Now, let’s look at a tip to make sure your sensors will create the proper alarm response when needed.

Completing Periodical Alarm Tests

When we refer to a security system “test,” we have a couple different goals in mind. A large part of security system maintenance involves ensuring communication between your alarm and our central station. You want to feel confident that if your alarm senses trouble, help will be a phone call away. If your alarm doesn’t send a signal upon activation, nobody will know to make this phone call. The second type of system test you should perform involves testing your sensors. For example, a wireless door sensor may lose radio contact with your alarm panel. If this happens, a burglar coming through that specific door will not create an alarm. Maintaining both central station and inter-system connectivity are both crucial.

To perform a system test, call either your central station or the company that installed your alarm. Explain that you wish to put the alarm on “test” mode. This allows signals to go through to the central station without their operators dispatching the police. Activate your alarm by either pushing a panic button or by arming your system and opening a door with a contact on it. In order to test multiple sensors, open every armed door and walk in front of every motion detector while testing your alarm. We can verify the alarm signals as they come through, confirming alarm communication as well as proper sensor operation! Let’s now turn our attention to our powerful interactive security monitoring option.

Upgrading Your Alarm Monitoring

Many of our customers still have outdated, phone-line based alarm monitoring in place to connect their security systems to our central station. Unfortunately, this leads to a couple issues. For starters, many home and business owners continue to pay for phone lines that they rarely use, just to keep their monitoring intact. Additionally, phone line monitoring can prove unreliable, as phone lines go down due to weather and other circumstances fairly frequently.

For these reasons, we recommend upgrading your security system to communicate with our central station via a piece of equipment known as a “cellular dialer.” Doing so allows for alarm monitoring without a phone line. Therefore, customers can now cancel their phone service and still have a monitored security system. Additionally, if a burglar cuts your phone lines or attempts to break in to your property while the lines are down, your system will still communicate with our central station.

Furthermore, your cellular dialer can add convenience and security above and beyond providing a consistent communication path. In our post on Using Your Smartphone to Add Security to Your Alarm, we discussed the generational expectation that customers can control their electronics with their smartphones. Our interactive cell dialer powered by Alarm.com allows users to arm and disarm their security systems remotely using the Alarm.com smartphone app. It also allows them to receive notifications regarding security system status changes. These status updates can include low battery alerts, power failure notices, and other similarly important messages. Now, let’s take a look at the role extended warranties play in making sure your security system works for you.

Taking Advantage of Extended Warranty Offerings

When we install an alarm, we also provide customers a means to keep equipment maintained and working with no unexpected expenses in the years to come. We offer security equipment warranty plans to help ensure your equipment works when you need it most. All of these warranty plans include free replacement of security equipment when it fails. Furthermore, some of our warranties even include annual testing and inspections of burglar-alarm related components! Signing up for one of these plans greatly enhances your security’s long-term effectiveness. Of course, doing so can also save you money in cases where you require us to replace any security-related items. Adding this security has long remained one of our top alarm maintenance tips due to the short-term and long-term security and cost benefits, in addition to the additional peace of mind these plans provide.

Putting it All Together and Making Sure Your Security System Works for You

We hope that this post aids your efforts in making sure your security system works for you. Additionally, we invite you to contact us with any questions this post may raise. We will happily answer any and all of your security-related inquiries. Furthermore, we also encourage you to take advantage of our free site survey program. We’ve long offered complimentary security audits and equipment quotes to both new and existing customers alike. While on site, we can help create solutions to your existing security concerns. Moreover, we can also make suggestions of our own based on observations of your property.

Perhaps you already have some security in place, but wish to add some of the measures discussed in this post. Or, maybe you have very little security equipment now and wish to get started from the ground up. Either way, we are here to help! Over our 38 years in business, we’ve helped over a thousand customers create and maintain complete security plans that give them the security and user experience they desire. Together, we can help you build and maintain a system of security equipment to keep you, your valuables, and your property as safe and secure as possible.