Best Way To Setup My Home Security

stayingsafe

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I'm buying a Yale Wireless Alarm System.

It comes with 2 PIR's and 2 Door Sensors.

The layout of my house is as follows

3 Bed Semi Detached with a Garage Extension.

Entry Points are

1) Front Door
2) Lounge Window (Front)
3) Patio Door (Back)
4) Kitchen Door (Back)
5) Kitchen Window (Back)
6) Garage Extension Window (Front)
7) Garage Extension Window (Back)
8) Upstairs Landing Window (Side)

The front of the house is facing the main road, so is pretty safe. We have good quality doors (handle goes up to give those extra bolts) and windows (lockable)

My main concern would be entry through the back, in particular the garage extension window, and possibly the upstairs landing window which can be accessed from the garage roof.

I'm getting a fob, and perhaps some extra sensors and door sensors but not sure exactly how best to set it up.

Any advise would be appreciated.

What I thought would be to put the window/door sensors on the back Kitchen window and garage window. Have one sensor covering the garage extension room, and one at the top of the stairs, facing down.

It would most likely be if someone were to get in, it would be through the extension, and then they would head upstairs.

Looking to get this installed tonight, once I pick it up from Homebase today.
 
It sounds like you already know what you want to do with the system, and based on what you've suggested it all sounds fine.

After all, no one knows the potential exploits in your home better than you ;)

Just make sure you cover yourself with sensors to all the main areas that someone could possibly get in from and ideally if you can add a GSM module then at least you can get texted if something is triggered - though not sure if the system you're looking at might support that sort of thing.

Pete
 
I'm buying a Yale Wireless Alarm System.

Any advise would be appreciated.

You seem to have covered what you need but my advice would be to buy something else. There are many better systems than the Yale available. I normally rip them out and replace with something better.

Burglars know that the Yale systems are DIY and consequently don't present much deterrent.
 
Can I ask what are the better systems you recommend over Yale for similar money then ? As im in the martket for a new alarm and they seem to tick a lot of boxes for around #200..

Thanks
 
The Yale ones are cheap for a reason.... Unfortunately you'll need to spend a little more to get something better. I'd check the ESP infinite range as a reasonably easy to program system of a minimum quality. I'd avoid the wireless siren though, lots of people seem to have trouble with it.
 
where i live there are alarms going off all the time and everyone always ignores them so you should probably get a proper system like one from ADT these are monitored by the police
 
Not all ADT systems are police response. The cheaper domestic ones are keyholder response only and you still pay £20 month for three years on top of installation.... The small systems with their headline install fee isn't even capable of generating a police response with current regulations, you need more detectors to achieve that so beware of what you think you might get and actually do want.
 
I'm moving house soon and need a new alarm system. It doesn't have one at the moment so I'd rather get a wireless system. Have been looking at getting a Visonic Powermax kit such as this one :

Visonic PowerMax Kit 4 Bedroom With External Wireless Siren - PowerMaxShop

Seems pretty reasonable and offers what I should need (apart from possibly adding smoke alarms). Any thoughts ?
 
You seem to have covered what you need but my advice would be to buy something else. There are many better systems than the Yale available. I normally rip them out and replace with something better.

Burglars know that the Yale systems are DIY and consequently don't present much deterrent.
I agree, I dont know about yale but response alarms have the control unit is in the bell box.

honeywell and texcom to name a few are good
I got veritas exel, 3 sensors, 3 contacts, battery, bell box and 100m alarm cable for £100, never had a problem with it
 
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do you really need wireless?

The house doesn't have an alarm system and as far as I know doesn't have any pre-wiring. The house I'm currently in was a new build and had everything pre-wired ready for an alarm system to be installed. I don't fancy the idea of the work involved putting all the wiring in place or having unsightly trunking so wireless seems like the best option for me unless you have any other suggestions ?
 
from what I gathered when I was looking for my system, wireless can be a pain to set up and professional installers prefer a wired setup. Although ADT quoted me a hybrid.

And it cost more to go wireless
 
Well the cost doesn't seem too bad to me. Getting a basic system fitted to my current house 5 years ago cost more than the 4 room wireless system I'm looking at.

Seems to have everything I need (pet friendly, dial-out, programmable, key-fobs) and good potential to expand it if needed.
 
The house doesn't have an alarm system and as far as I know doesn't have any pre-wiring. The house I'm currently in was a new build and had everything pre-wired ready for an alarm system to be installed. I don't fancy the idea of the work involved putting all the wiring in place or having unsightly trunking so wireless seems like the best option for me unless you have any other suggestions ?

If you find a good install engineer you'll be hard pushed to see cable runs, sadly that rules out most of the big national companies like ADT, Pointer, Secom as these guys want to be in and out ASAP so will run the cables in the way which suits them not the customer most of the time.

Best beat it to look for someone who is Ex-national that's set up their own business as they'll be more inclined to do the job as you want and do it properly first time round.
 
Well the cost doesn't seem too bad to me. Getting a basic system fitted to my current house 5 years ago cost more than the 4 room wireless system I'm looking at.

Seems to have everything I need (pet friendly, dial-out, programmable, key-fobs) and good potential to expand it if needed.
ADT quoted £374 for five rooms silver that was basic didt even have a bell in the bell box.

What put me off wireless was the fact that I cant go upstairs while talking with friends on xbox live, my xbox is at the front of the house and my stairs run in the middle of the house.
 
ADT quoted £374 for five rooms silver that was basic didt even have a bell in the bell box.

What put me off wireless was the fact that I cant go upstairs while talking with friends on xbox live, my xbox is at the front of the house and my stairs run in the middle of the house.

I would have thought the xbox headset doesn't have much range anyway as it has to be low powered ? But my current house does seem to play havoc with wireless as well (bad signal from my router). Think thats because of the metal supports they tend to put in new houses now. But my current alarm system does have a wireless sensor in the garage which is detached from the house and I haven't had any problems with that so can't forsee having any issues with this system as the distance from control panel to any of the sensors won't be any further.

I've actually bought the Visonic kit now. Just haven't had the time to power it up yet and give it a test. Will probably do it over the weekend so I can have it pretty much setup as soon as I move into the new house.
 
Thought I'd just give an update to this as I've now moved house.

System was very easy to setup. Pretty much everything worked straight out of the box as soon as I'd powered them up. All I had to do was pair up a couple of extra sensors and rename a couple more. Signal very strong even through a couple of external walls to my garage. Keyfobs work a treat from outside. Been running for about a week now and had no false alarms.

Lots of different options to fine tune the setup and the manual is easy to follow.

Still waiting for BT to activate my line in the house and then i'll connect up the system to it as well.

Only very slight annoyance I have is that the chime that signals a sensor triggering (ie back door/garage) when you're at home can't be changed as far as I can tell so I'm stuck with a door bell noise or the name of the zone when I open the front door etc..
 
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BeelzebubUK, do you know the range of visonic PIR? I've a through lounge so thinking to install one PIR on top of front window and one on the top of patio door and the last one on the top of front door.
So thinking to buy 3 bed kit but i'm still worrying about kitchen and the upstrairs landing with window should i cover them as well?

p.s. my house is semi-D so side window is bit high
 
BeelzebubUK, do you know the range of visonic PIR? I've a through lounge so thinking to install one PIR on top of front window and one on the top of patio door and the last one on the top of front door.
So thinking to buy 3 bed kit but i'm still worrying about kitchen and the upstrairs landing with window should i cover them as well?

p.s. my house is semi-D so side window is bit high

I don't know the exact range but they should easily cover what you need. I have the garage which is detached from the house (PIR), front door (contact), side door (contact), living room (PIR), Downstairs hallway (PIR) and an upstairs study (PIR) which is in the far corner of the house all covered with a strong signal (the panel can run a test). This is in a 4 bed detached house so covers a good area.

Depends on the layout of your room where you should position them but PIRS should be ideally located in the corner of a room to cover the broadest area. I don't think it would be recommended to have them above windows.
 

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