Turning off power to alarm

stator

I have an alarm system ADE Concept 6. Looks like it's from the 90s and pretty standard stuff.

It's not armed at the moment, so the alarm can't go off. I don't use it as I have indoor pets.

I'd like to turn the whole thing off completely, but am worried that the alarm will go off if the power is turned off for a certain amount of time and that the internal battery might last longer than that period of time.
The alarm siren is VERY loud.
It's wired into the consumer unit with it's own MCB, so it's easy to turn it off. I've turned it off a few times, but never long enough to drain the battery.

Does anyone know if you can just turn them off when they are not armed?

ComicGeek

You should be able to just turn the mains power off to it and let the battery drain down to empty. It will probably beep every hour or so to warn you that the mains power is off - on our system we could press disarm again to stop the warning beep for 8 hours. But it shouldn't go into alarm if in disarm mode.

Ours took 3 days for the battery to completely die.

Slinky

We have pet friendly sensors on our alarm, you may be able to get these rather than turn the alarm off

ComicGeek

Slinky wrote: »

We have pet friendly sensors on our alarm, you may be able to get these rather than turn the alarm off

Very hit and miss these, we had problems with our pet friendly sensors picking up our small cat and yorkie, even though it was well below the supposed cut off. In a couple of rooms we even experimented with double sensors, where both had to be activated to alarm, but still not 100% reliable.

If the alarm isn't being used, then best to just switch it off. Leave the external box installed as a deterrent.

Biggles

If there's a room you want your pets to be able to access while you are out, you can just change the alarm setup to disable the sensor in that room.

Shame not to use it if it's installed and working.

scottishblondie

When the internal backup battery in my rental property's alarm needed to be changed, I had to turn off the alarm to stop the blessed thing from going off every 30 minutes as my tenants were being workn by it during the night. The siren in the external box had its own battery and turning off the power resulted in this going off for 30 minutes - we just had to wait it out. Then after a few days it randomly started going off again, despite there being no power at all connected.

I have found that there is an engineer's code available that will totally disable the system for maintenance, however, it has been changed from the default in my case and the procedure to reset it would require me to be in two places at once! Perhaps you can find the engineer's code for your system and disable it before disconnecting the power?

stator

scottishblondie wrote: »

When the internal backup battery in my rental property's alarm needed to be changed, I had to turn off the alarm to stop the blessed thing from going off every 30 minutes as my tenants were being workn by it during the night. The siren in the external box had its own battery and turning off the power resulted in this going off for 30 minutes - we just had to wait it out. Then after a few days it randomly started going off again, despite there being no power at all connected.

I have found that there is an engineer's code available that will totally disable the system for maintenance, however, it has been changed from the default in my case and the procedure to reset it would require me to be in two places at once! Perhaps you can find the engineer's code for your system and disable it before disconnecting the power?

That's worrying as mine has a separate alarm siren on the inside of the house too, if it has it's own battery things would be a lot more risky. Might have to give it the hammer treatment until it's in too small pieces.

I don't want to keep the system because it's very noisey, and if it goes off the sound is seriously distressing for everyone in the house, humans and pets.

Biggles

stator wrote: »

I don't want to keep the system because it's very noisey, and if it goes off the sound is seriously distressing for everyone in the house, humans and pets.

Silent alarms never caught on, for some reason.