Burglar alarm problem

Almost certainly a dead back up battery, 5 years tops is a generous life span. There will also be batteries in the bell box too, they last a bit longer ..but after15 years chances are they will be duff as well.

disconnect mains power disconnect battery if there's another battery in bellbox, disconnect or wait it out until flat. it will be silent.

NT

You need to get the engineering manual for the alarm which will tell you how it all works. You did not mention the make and model.

As others have said, you have a dead back up battery.

To decommission it properly you really need the service code, not just the regular activate/deactivate code. This allows you to open the box, change sensors etc without activating the tamper circuits.

Be warned that the external sounder will probably have its own battery so if you don?t have the service code, removing the mains supply and the backup battery will be treated as a ?tamper event? and trigger the sounder. These things can very noisy for a *long* time.

Tim

When doing that, disable the sounder first :)

Wear a black & white striped shirt to amuse the neighbours.

NT

easily

Which probably has a knackered battery as well after at least ten years of no maintenance.

Shouldn't sound for more than 20 mins. Operative word "shouldn't" and see above. B-)

Probably best to tell neighbours you're going to do some work on the system after the false alarm and it might sound a few times. Don't tell 'em it's going to be decommisioned...

Get access to the external sounder(s) and some ear defenders. Open the external sounder, it'll sound due to tamper, disconnect it's battery. Switch off the mains power to the panel and it'll probably fall silent. Open the panel disconnect it's battery. Leave mains disconnected, take fuse out of SWFCU? Job done.

Yes, its a common failing. The battery will no longer be able to supply the instantaneous power when the mains goes off. However if you check the terminal voltage its likely to still indicate a nominal 12V.

The backup battery should be replaced every 4 to 5 years. I replaced mine 7 days ago after around 4 years of use. I stick a label on the front of the alarm control panel with the replacement date as the years seem to fly by without noticing with such items.

Power cut with dead backup battery will put the external bell box into a state where it thinks someone is up to no good and ringing.

That is bad advice. It will almost certainly go off in panic mode and the external bell will ring continuously until its battery dies.

If it is a half decent alarm it will have an anti-tamper microswitch in the main control panel that will go off immediately when you try to open it. The procedure is put it into engineering mode with a code and take out the correct screw from the panel first. If you have watched your service engineer carefully enough then you will know which one it is.

You need the engineering service manual for the unit to know the right details for any given system.

It depends on what has been programmed for the the alarm on time. I reprogrammed mine from the default 15 minutes to 5 minutes so if the alarm did go off the "bell" would only sound for 5 minutes. Very few people these days take any notice of an alarm (apart from being annoyed by it) so any longer than 5 minutes is a nuisance and if there are people in the house then hopefully the alarm going off would persuade them to move on.

as a Scene of Crime officer said to me "Burglar alarms alarm burglars"

On a 15 year old system, I doubt the backup battery in the bell box will last for a long time.

Will it? Does that response not violate the 'legal' time limit on the period a bell or siren may sound for?

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Yes. But it only happens in the event that the bell box finds itself cut off from the control unit. Older ones are not very smart once isolated.

Most likely the bellbox battery is dead. If not it will ring briefly until OP disconnects the battery. That should only take a minute. A perfectly effective method.

OP doesn't need anything more than a ladder and basic hand tools, and is presumably asking because they don't have the info you specify. If they do, great, they already know how to do it easily & silently.

NT

Older ones are normally dead once isolated.

NT

Apart from new builds and rewires I generally only get asked to fit alarms by customers the week after they have been burgled or their next door neighbour has been burgled.

A frend of mine would not have an alarm as it said it showed he had something worth pinching. I tried to explain that most people could guess what he had just by his age, his property and his car. Sure enough his next door neighbours has a break in (while they were in bed) and had their car and a few other bit's stolen. That included a set of keys to their doors and their children's houses. Any well programmed in satnav in the car could give away their kids addresses.

He had an alarm fitted the week after they were robbed.

Main reason for an alarm is to persuade the thief that next door is a lower risk of being detected whilst in the act. Probably dummy alarm boxes (front and back of the property) work just as well as a proper alarm.

Both my front and back door (and adjacent windows) are illuminated with dusk to dawn lighting with very low wattage led bulbs. This removes any dark corners where someone can hide from people passing.

Or that the engineers code might be changed and locked out?

Bollocks:-)

NT's suggestion is the best one so far.

30 minutes at most.

Do it on a Sunday morning when the Churches are polluting the air with their bell ringing.