"This house alarmed by..." signs

[Kingcreek]

My house and business are both "protected" (monitored is more accurate) by alarms. Had signs on glass of business and got B&E'd 4 weeks ago, and the perp got busted. Classic dumb crook stuff plus a police response time of less than 2 minutes. I can't criticize our local LE folks.
I don't have the signs at home.
Both have certain alterations to phone service to allow alarm call to go in even if phone lines are cut. Cutting the phone lines has become standard procedure in B&Es round here. So has tossing something heavy in thru a door or window to test for a real and functioning alarm.

 

[wingnutx]

Once I put up my alarm company sign, the neighborhood hoodlums quit messing with my house. I had previously had some trouble with them stealing out of my yard. Nothing has happened in the 18 months since I put up the sign.

Good idea, imho.

 

[Tim Burke]

I recommend having a line cut monitor on your system if it's tied to a phone line, provided you have neighbors close enough to hear your alarm and see your house. That way, if they do cut the phone lines, the alarm goes off immediately. The neighbor's alarm going off may not attract a lot of attention, but if there are a couple of strangers standing beside the house when it alarms that will probably get more notice.

 

[Caliburn]

Hey Tim, that cut line monitor sounds good. Is it included with the alarm service or an add-on you can get somewhere?

 

[Ryder]

I think the stickers just advertise to criminals that you have something worth stealing.

If what you have is valuble enough to spend extra money on protecting then a criminal is going to figure such property is something worth the risk of getting caught for.

Better to blend in with everyone else. Around here that means no stickers. Now if everyone else has the stickers that's different.

 

[brownie0486]

Every house has something worth stealing in my opinion. Signs or no signs.

When we set up our present system, we went wireless and battery backup.

Motion in the right locations, contact points on the exterior points of entry.

My wife wants the sign on the lawn to deter them [ if they can read ], and it's there for all to see. My initial take was to not put the sign up and advertise the house was protected. Upon reconsideration, I believe the sign is a deterrent [ at least in part ].

What I did was have the alarm not go off at the house. If someone does get in and trips the switches, they do not hear anything. My idea is that I want them caught in the house.

The local PD types know me [ worked on their dept for awhile ]. If they get the signal to the house, they send three cruisers. Happened once since installed. No perps, the wife hit the panic alarm by mistake on her keyring when leaving the house one day.

The best part of the setup is that if the lines are cut, the battery backup fails, etc etc, I am paged immediately. So if they cut the lines, take out the alt power supply and enter, I'm paged and on the phone to the PD myself to respond to the house.

The beeper system worked great when my wife hit the panic alarm. I was on the phone with the locals before they could get to the house. Waited on line with the Sgt. until they checked it out and secured the area. I reset the alarm remotely from my location and later took the panic button off her keyring.

Until last year, I had a 100 pound Akita they had to get by in the house as well. Didn't want to think what would have happened if the bg's had entered with her protecting the place.

It's a two edged sword probably relative the signs on the lawn or not deterring the perps. Eenie, Menie, Mynie Mo I guess. For now, the signs are there for the public to see. As I'm the only one on the street with the signs up, perhaps they'll pick another house and pass mine by.

I'll let you know if I get paged and the outcome. I thought long and hard on the way I wanted the system to work before choosing the system and the way it notified people.

I trust the beeper to go off at the slightest problem with the alarm. It's been tested many times and has not failed in two years. They send a code to the beeper [ 911 ] and I know to call the PD to get to the house if they did not recieve the signal for any reason.

The alarm is also set up for fire detection direct to the FD and I'm paged for that as well.

Similiar to Tim Burkes setup, but I get paged if they cut the lines or mess with the system in anyway. My beeper notification plan is not an addtional charge for me.

Brownie

 

[Sylvilagus Aquaticus]

I have a sticker in my windows by the doors and on the corners..

"STEAL HERE...

DIE HERE..."

but then again, this is Texas.

I've never had a problem, either.

Regards,
Rabbit.

 

[Tim Burke]

that cut line monitor sounds good. Is it included with the alarm service or an add-on you can get somewhere?

It's been included, at my request, in both of the systems that I've installed. I don't think you can add it as an add-on to a commercial monitored system, but the alarm company could probably add it after the fact.
I have a circuit dedicated to the line cut monitor, so that I can disable it when Sprint is doing work that interrupts my phone service. This also allows the monitoring company to ignore any calls where the only fault is on that circuit... if they get a call from the line cut monitor circuit, it must have been a temporary interruption of service, and requires no response. If my line was really cut, they wouldn't get a call.

 

[Hkmp5sd]

There is also another way to greatly increase the effectiveness of your alarm system. Most systems have window sensors and include a couple of motion sensors. Anything extra from the alarm company costs a fortune.

You can add a "noise" sensor to your system, which supposedly goes off if someone busts a window instead of opening it. Have one added to your system. Then go down to radio shack and buy some of the stand-alone alarms they sell. These are the little alarms using 9v batteries that you can hang on a door and that activate when it's moved. They are generally for people travelling to use in hotels. You can also get stand-alone motion sensors that do the same thing. Some have a few second time delay so you can turn them off instead of listening to the siren when you enter the room.

You can put either of these just about anywhere in your house, like on the handle to your safe, on the handle inside a closet, hang one on the curtain rods, etc. If a BG does manage to get past your window sensors, which isn't all that hard, and avoid the rooms with motion detectors, he can still trip one of these, which will set off your noise monitor and alert the security company. It also adds to the noise of your main system alarm going off.

You now have a custom system where a BG cannot anticipate the traps, no matter how familiar he is with the alarms systems your security company uses.

 

[TamThompson]

OK, y'all might laugh this off, but I think I might've read somewhere that keeping your yard very nice and tidy is something of a subconscious deterrent to a thug, since people who'll go to that kind of trouble will also go to the trouble to protect their place. OTOH, people who let their yard go to pot usually don't take care to secure their things very well, I wouldn't imagine.

So, maybe a good mowing and a smart trim job on the bushes would help.

 

[Trebor]

I've heard of systems that use the prerecorded sounds of dogs barking tied to a motion sensor to deter criminals. Is anyone familiar with these? I heard about them from a buddy who is a irrigation systems installer. He ran across one once and wouldn't go back to the door until the home owner called him on his cell to tell him there was not really a dog there.

Personally, I don't own a dog, so I'm not worried about the legal liability of "Beware of Dog" signs. When I have a house, I'll have the "Beware of Dog" signs out, along with dog dishes, chewed up toys in the yard, etc, to promote the illusion. I'll look into the automated barking systems and possibly install those as well.

I saw a segement on a local police dog on TV once and the dog's handler had large "Warning - Police Dog on Premises" signs (or similiar wording) all around his fence. I'm wondering if they may be even more of a deterent than normal "Beware of Dog" signs.

Rob

 

[TimRB]

There has been a lot of interesting discussion of alarms in this thread, and I don't have much to add. However, that won't keep me from adding something anyway. Namely, don't put too much stock in the "monitored" alarm companies.

Our alarm system is monitored, but it false alarms all the time. A door is left ajar; a cat sets off the motion detector, whatever. The cops know this, so they don't waste a lot of energy responding to home alarms. But they will send someone out sometime that day, and, since it was a false alarm, send you a bill for fifty bucks. I hate the GD thing, but my wife loves it.

Put your trust in locks, safes, and good neighbors. Oh--but we do have the signs.

Tim