Home Security - what we did

Good information...thanks for posting.

We also have several internet cameras that view the outside and the inside of the house. We like Foscam

Excellent post. Some of the new electronic gadgets are actually VERY useful; some others are just toys.

Will those devices still work for a time while the power is off ?

Do you carry a list of local phone numbers with you while travelling.....police, fire, etc.....because dialing 911 from a thousand miles away won't help much !!

We went with SimpliSafe. Door and window sensors, motion detectors, glassbreak sensors, smoke detectors, and temperature sensors. Have not put in cameras yet. System can be controlled from my cell phone or laptop. Can check sensor status at any time. 24/7 monitoring with police/fire dispatch. Not horribly expensive and monitoring fees are cheaper than ADT.

Having not checked into something like this but my first question is what can the POLICE/FIRE DEPT do for you if no one is at the home...

They probably can't go stomping into a house without permission as well...

I know recently the house across from us had a fire started up for some reason behind the house. I called the Fire Department and reported the back yard/woods fire which they responded and put out the small fire that was in the woods/back yard.

There was a large pipe coming out of the house with lots of smoke in it like maybe an heater exhaust that caught our eyes etc...

No one was here that owned the house and no one had any contact telephone numbers so the Fire Dept and the Local Police that also showed up would not knock down the door of the house to check on possible fire condition inside the house... They said the only way they would go inside was if they confirmed there was a fire in the house.

If the Fire/Police does break into the house to check on things who secures the house after they leave if no one is at home. Now it is setting there with a busted window on the back door haha

They did secure the outside area and got the woods fire put out... Everybody left the scene... It was a few days later when the owner got back asking questions as to what happened haha...

I guess these remote devices have to be registered with the local departments with some sort of written paperwork on what can be done when no one is around the property???

I know when I call 911 they have a bunch of questions to ask me... If a machine calls 911 wonder how that works hehe...

This all probably works just fine - I am just in the dark on how it works...

Roy Ken

Pasusan,

Just wondering, when it snows, do you have someone clean the driveway to make it look like your home?

I guess you could have a neighbor drive up your driveway after each snow to make it look like you moved your car out of the garage. :D

Safe travels,
MM.

DW just bought one of those Ring camera/doorbells from Costco. Works pretty good and doesn't cost much. She's an iphone addict and it's yet another thing that she can play with on it. :( At first it was going off multiple times a day until we figured out it was birds flying around the front porch. Must be a nest up on the roof somewhere. Dialed back the sensitivity a bit and is now fine. Video images get stored in the cloud and I think for up to 6 months.

When I built our house I hardwired to a sensor on every door and window, motion sensors throughout and a few glass break sensors. It's alarmed like Fort Knox and monitored 24/7. I also ran wiring to 10+ locations around the house for cameras but never installed a video surveillance system which wouldn't have sent a notice by phone anyway. Another part of our alarm system is my SIL who lives in a suite above the garage - she's actually paying us to be part of the monitoring system, lol!

We're in the country with neighbors several hundred feet away and having a camera as well is nice so we can see if unwanted people come down the driveway. The Ring picked up a couple of JWs this past week so it does work! :) Lots of similar ones on the market these days.

Went to a local home show the other day and ADT had their system including video monitoring on display that they were hawking. OMG, what a terrible pitch from the sales girl, technically and money-wise. VERY expensive. She scribbled a lot of notes (mostly illegible) on a large piece of paper and wouldn't even let us keep it afterwards. What a joke. Wouldn't have bought from them anyway but just wanted to hear what they had.

RoyB wrote:
Having not checked into something like this but my first question is what can the POLICE/FIRE DEPT do for you if no one is at the home...

They probably can't go stomping into a house without permission as well...

I know recently the house across from us had a fire started up for some reason behind the house. I called the Fire Department and reported the back yard/woods fire which they responded and put out the small fire that was in the woods/back yard.

There was a large pipe coming out of the house with lots of smoke in it like maybe an heater exhaust that caught our eyes etc...

No one was here that owned the house and no one had any contact telephone numbers so the Fire Dept and the Local Police that also showed up would not knock down the door of the house to check on possible fire condition inside the house... They said the only way they would go inside was if they confirmed there was a fire in the house.

If the Fire/Police does break into the house to check on things who secures the house after they leave if no one is at home. Now it is setting there with a busted window on the back door haha

They did secure the outside area and got the woods fire put out... Everybody left the scene... It was a few days later when the owner got back asking questions as to what happened haha...

I guess these remote devices have to be registered with the local departments with some sort of written paperwork on what can be done when no one is around the property???

I know when I call 911 they have a bunch of questions to ask me... If a machine calls 911 wonder how that works hehe...

This all probably works just fine - I am just in the dark on how it works...

Roy Ken

Yeah - we are not at all connected with the police or fire department. If we get notification that some one came to the door and then got into the house we will have to call the police ourselves. We will have video evidence of the bad guys with the doorbell video - they save it online for pretty long.

Mostly this just gives us peace of mind that the furnace is working and no one is in there.

Mr.Mark wrote:
Pasusan,

Just wondering, when it snows, do you have someone clean the driveway to make it look like your home?

I guess you could have a neighbor drive up your driveway after each snow to make it look like you moved your car out of the garage. :D

Safe travels,
MM.

That's exactly why we don't go away in the winter... This was APRIL!!!! The good thing was each time it snowed it melted within a few days. :)

RoyB wrote:
Having not checked into something like this but my first question is what can the POLICE/FIRE DEPT do for you if no one is at the home...

With SimpliSafe, and ADT for that matter, the police/fire dispatch is done by a person at the company dispatch center. They will also contact me via my cell phone. The police will check the house for signs of a break in and take the appropriate action. If someone has broken in and the house cannot be secured, I just call my insurance company and they send out a board up crew to secure the house.
If the smoke detectors have triggered, the fire department is called and they will most likely break through the front door to deal with the fire. Have never had a smoke detector just go off for no reason so if one is triggered there is probably a fire. Not much chance of someone burning dinner when nobody is here. Once again, the insurance company sends out a board up crew to secure whatever is left.
Have had the system for a couple of years now and feel much better about being gone for any length of time that before when we just asked the neighbors to keep an eye on the place. As for paperwork, SimpliSafe gave us a form letter that we gave to the Police department when we installed the system. It identifies their monitoring center and I had to sign a document stating that I would pay $30 for false alarms if I have more than one per year. So far, I have had none.
My daughter has ADT and it works pretty much the same way, except she pays over twice what I do for the monitoring service.