Security System Maintenance Tips

When it comes to home security, few options provide as much value as a monitored alarm. Installing a security system ensures that a security breach creates a blaring siren response. This notifies you of any danger and often scares the burglars away. Additionally, our monitoring service will also provide a follow-up call and, if necessary, a police response to check on the situation. Obviously, these alarm responses create valuable security and peace of mind. Therefore, keeping your alarm up and running for as long as possible should remain a top priority. In today’s post, we provide some valuable security system maintenance tips to help you keep your security system operational when you need it most.

First, we’ll look at the importance of keeping your alarm components clean and tidy. Due to the “out of sight, out of mind” nature of many of these sensors, grime buildup can often cause issues. From there, we’ll show you the importance of testing your alarm periodically. As part of this section, we’ll also explain how to conduct these tests as well. Then, we’ll shift our focus to keeping your alarm’s monitoring service as consistent and effective as possible. As part of this section, we’ll detail our unique interactive alarm monitoring offering. Finally, we’ll wrap up by detailing why we recommend adding an extended warranty when installing an alarm. These plans can help you financially and ensure your alarm works for you when you need it most. Now, let’s get started with our security system maintenance tips!

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 homeowners 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 home 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 proper alarm maintenance.

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 Our Security System Maintenance Tips to Work for You

We hope that these security system maintenance tips help you keep your alarm working for years to come. Additionally, we also encourage you to contact us with any questions or concerns this post may raise for you. We work with customers daily to create and maintain alarms that secure their homes. To get started, feel free to take advantage of our free site survey program. We provide complimentary security system designs and quotes to both new and existing customers alike. During our visit, we can address any and all of your existing security concerns. Moreover, we can make suggestions of our own based on our observations of your property.

Perhaps you have an alarm in place and wish to make sure that it’s set up for long-term effectiveness. Or, maybe you have yet to install an alarm and wish to design a system from the ground up. Either way, we are here to help. We have over 36 years of experience working with customers to design systems that fit their own unique security needs. Together, we can create a complete security system design and maintenance plan to help you keep your valuables, your property, and your family as safe and secure as possible!