After deciding I needed a new Alarm System as mine was becoming ancient, after many options given to me by the Alarm Company I opted for this. The Guardtec Euro-Sec CPX System. Please understand at this point I am a woman and am not into loads of technical stuff, but I am writing this from a woman's point of view and my opinion (so voltage and amps are not included).
This system is totally wire free which is brilliant, no wires trailing up walls, no lifting carpets, no unsightly trunking. Its all done by infra red (state of the art eh). The main keypad should be located somewhere in your hallway, so that when you enter the house you do not have a great distance to go to dis-arm it. Mine is located on the side of my stairs, above my understair door. The batteries in the wire-free system last supposedly for 5 years, but the engineer told me that realistically they should be changed every 3 years.
It took the engineer around 4 hours to completely install the system and that included a quick tutorial of how it works too.
My alarm system comes armed with 8 zones, (zones being the area the alarm covers, ie. one zone would be your dining room.
Each zone is covered by a PIR which means a Passive Infra-Red Sensor. I opted for Pet Sensors, this means that if you have cats or dogs the alarm will not go off by there movement. The PIR is set at a level which means movement over a certain height will only set the alarm off, so your moggies are safe to move around in the house whenever or wherever they want. If you had normal PIR's the pets would set the alarm off as it detects any movement whatsoever, I think that this is a brill idea, and so far has worked well.
My alarm has many different functions on it:-
I can set it on part-setat night-time to cover just the downstairs, so if I get up in the night to go to the bathroom I don't set the alarm off.
I can set it, so when I am indoors, my garage is still armed but the house isn't. Ideal at night-time when the curtains are drawn and you cannot see the garage. The outdoor range on the PIR's is 100 metres in open space.
or I put it on full-set so the whole house is armed when I am out.
My Keypad holds up to 15 different security codes, so everyone can have a code they can remember personally, good if your not very good at remembering digits.
The panel also comes with two key fobs, which enables you to set it and disarm it by a flick of a button on your key-fob, this could be put on your car keys etc, this comes in handy when you come into the house armed with shopping bags, as you can just press your key fob, rather than dropping all your bags, going to the keypad and punching your numbers in. The fob also has a panic button within it, which if pressed will activate the house alarm immediately causing all the bells to ring. To me this is a good idea, for example if you were putting your car away and someone approached you from behind, a press of this button will set all the alarm bells ringing, so is a good back-up device.
What I love about this alarm system is the speech-dial facility. This is a facility which can be used on any phone network, whether it be BT, NTL or any other network. It enables you to register four different phone numbers, these can be landline or mobile numbers. What happens is that if you are out and your alarm is activated the speech dialler automatically phones the first number on your list of 4, this could be for example your own mobile phone, if nobody answers the first number, the system automatically goes on to the next number and will continue to do so until somebody answers the phone. When you answer the phone you will hear a message telling you that your alarm has gone off and which zone it is that has been activated (ie your front door, living room etc), once you hear this message you just press any key on your phone twice and this stops the dialler phoning any other number.
The outside bell you receive has two red continuous flashing lights which turns into a strobe if the alarm is activated. The outside bell will ring for between 10-15 minutes if the alarm is activated and I must say is very hard to miss if it does go off.
On entry to your house with your alarm activated you have around 30 seconds to disarm it, this can be set on both front and back doors, or if you choose you can have it set on only the front door. This means if someone entered through the back door with the alarm activated, the alarm would go off straight away. I have this option, as my back garden backs onto an alley, and we have no gate etc to access the house from the back, so it would never be an issue to gain access through this way.
On the whole I am very pleased with my new alarm, I feel alot safer knowing I have it. There is one more option you can have with this alarm (which I have yet to take up) this is to have it connected to Central Station. This facility means that if one zone goes off, Central Station are notified, if a second zone is activated it is classed as an Intruder and the Police are notified and attend your premises. There is a fee for this (around £200 per year), but I don't feel this necessary at the moment. The fact that the speech dialler contacts you and informs you is enough for me at the moment, but it is another option worth considering in the future. Another point to make about this is that if you have three false alarms in one year, you are removed from this service.
The alarm system and fitting cost me £650 but I feel it is worth every penny and highly recommend it.
For a fee of £80.00 a year to the Alarm Company, I am covered for any problems with it (24 hours a day) and this includes a service to.
I must also state that the alarm company themself were brill, no hard sell, very polite and helpful and showed me all my options, I was then left to decide which option I wanted before contacting them to let them know what alarm panel I wanted. Great service all round.
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Price
£650
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