Which burglar alarm?....

[GraceGolden]

Need one, due to a few burglaries near me recently.... But. Have absolutely no idea where to start! Anyone got one recently? I Think you can install yourself, though (sshhh) I don't have much faith my OH could manage that....

If you want one that reduces your insurance premiums it has to be NACOSS (sp?) approved. Normally a security company can install. You can get pet friendly sensors so your cat/dog doesnt trigger alarms. Some can phone you or a keyholder company when an alarm is triggered.

You can get wireless sensors to avoid trailing cables. Also sensors on sheds and outbuildings. You need to put the panel next to a fused spur power point and have one cable which runs from the alarm to the exterior bell. Another cable runs from the alarm to.a phone point. We paid a deposit for our alarm and were given cables for the bell and phone connections which we ran in the floors when doing other work. Then when we were ready they came back and finished. So we have no visible cables. Dont know about the adt type ones which are diy but they dont look too convincing to me.

do you want to pay a hundred pounds, a thousand pounds, or three thousand pounds?

The Approved ones will bring you a small discount on your insurance premium but if you are burgled and it has not been set, the policy may say they will not pay out.

I have an approved one. To retain approval it has to be serviced twice a year by an approved contractor. My annual contract costs me £280 a year which includes monitoring (the alarm system phones a control room and signals when an attack is detected)

To get police response it must be approved and monitored and you must have two or more keyholders who can get to the house with the keys within 20 minutes. If you get (I think more than two in a year) false alarms police response will be suspended.

Police will attend subject to availability and not having anything more important to do (e.g. my commercial premises had an attempted night-time break-in recently, we chased off the intruders, two of whom were on the roof by the velux windows) and called the police, saying where the intruders were hiding, and that we could identify them, but they did not attend for two days, by which time there was no point.

It may not reduce your home insurance premium unless you live in a high risk area. When I had my burglar installed I called my insurer to get a revised quote and it saved a grand total of £8! However, the insurer introduced conditions into the insurance that the alarm be set every time we left the house and at night (we have a separate downstairs circuit which can be set on its own). I wasn't happy with that so we decided not to accept the discount and as far as the insurer is concerned we don't have an alarm.

My alarm is NACOSS approved and doesn't require an annual contract - it is wired into the phone line and calls me and DH if it goes off (and can be programmed to call a number of others). It cost about £800 (we have a fairly large 4 bed house) and all the sensors are wireless so installation made no mess. We have it serviced yearly. It came from here and I have been very happy with it.

yes, I agree with suburban. I would rather pay a bit extra than run the risk of having a claim rejected because some twit left the house without setting the alarm.

Thanks everyone, this is really really helpful. Sorry I didn't respond for so long. Going to look at that securitycam.co.uk now. I had no idea they were so pricey, but guess we have to just bite the bullet....
Thanks again folks.

You didn't mention your budget.

you can buy a cheap, DIY-install alarm for less than £200, though alarm installers will sneer at it.