[Rob van dam]

I have been trying to take care of this issue for sometime but only now just got around to it.My family use to have and ADT alarm system in our house but the contract stipulated that we owned the alarm when the contract was up which we didnt know.Anyway they said that we have to pay to have it removed.I currently have the alarm,home line and adsl connection hooked up through a splitter.Anyone able to give me some advice on how i can go about removing the system without damaging antyhing.

cheers

[SirCastor]

The trickiest part of an alarm system is removing it from control of your phone lines. Alarms should have something called "Complete Phone seizure" meaning that in an emergency, regardless of the current state of any phone, it can drop the connection and call out.

You should be able to open up your phone box and find a set of wire through which everything else passes through. That's where I would have done it. You'll probably have to pull the system out, see what colors it's connected to, It'll require a little logic working, but it's not too hard.

Edit: I just realized that you're in Austrailia, so your alarm setup may be different than here in the states.

[baw]

Remove the phone line going to the ADT box? Seems like it would be that simple.

[SirCastor]

It's not unplugging the phone line that's the tought part, it's removing the route of the phone line that plugs into the box. All of the internal phone lines would normally go to the telcom box on the outside of the house. When an Alarm is installed, it needs to have total control, so they make all the phones go to the alarm, and then the alarm goes to the telco.

The problem is that they can't just go ripping up your house to re-lay all the wires, so they instead have to be tricky and take the signal going to the telco back through the house to the alarm, and then send the signal from the alarm to the telco... and this all with the existing wiring. It's not super-difficult, it just requires a lot of visual thinking.

I hope that made sense. If I have some time, I'll draw a diagram.

[Todd Madson]

So, my question would be - why are you discontinuing alarm service.

Is it a royal pain to deal with or did the lustre of having an alarm wear off or?

[wdlove]

I have been thinking about getting an alarm system. Just never seem to get around to getting one.

[SSharon]

I think alarms are more hassle than they are worth. Of the people I know that have been robbed some had alarms and some did not. Are there any statistics on homes robbed with and without alarms (assuming all doors and windows are locked)?

[ghporter]

If the equipment is yours, why worry about taking it out? Is it hurting anything?

As SirCastor says, the alarm should be deeply entwined in your phone like connection, making it able to signal the monitoring station whether or not a phone is off the hook-that's to keep a burglar from slipping in and tying up the phone line with a phone off the hook. some even have a connection for a cellular link so if the phone line is interrupted THAT signals the monitoring station.

If your DSL and voice phone are working fine, I'd leave the alarm system in place.

[SirCastor]

I remember reading somewhere that the most effective means of detering burglars was to post a "Beware of Dog" sign, but that's probably more of a rumor (Still, if I were going to rob a house, I would be a lot less worrisome of an alarm system than a dog.)

I'd second Glenn's recommendation to leave the system in place. Now that I think about it, you may be able to just pull out the panel and still have phone functionality. If the system was installed properly, it should return the phone system back to the lines and the box.

There should be a little box that the alarm plugs into (likely in the wall) that taps into the house line. The box is designed to break it's own circuit and route to the alarms control. (This box is an official FCC device, it's called RJ-X11 or something) If the alarm's not plugged in, it just continues the phone circuit. I'd say disconnect the panel and see if it doesn't work.

Again, this is all US stuff, and it may be different in different countries

[Scotttheking]

Originally Posted by SSharon

I think alarms are more hassle than they are worth. Of the people I know that have been robbed some had alarms and some did not. Are there any statistics on homes robbed with and without alarms (assuming all doors and windows are locked)?

In my mom's old neighborhood there was only ever one robbery. Said robbery took place in the one house that did not have an alarm system. Said house quickly had one installed. There have been no robberies since. /anecdotal evidence

Where were you all weekend? I was hoping to catch up a bit, but I never found you after Friday.

--Scott

[kikkoman]

just leave it for the next homeowners if you ever decide to sell the house

[Spliffdaddy]

The instruction manual and setup directions are available online. Just disable the telephone dialer via the keypad.

If you can find the model number on the control unit I can find the directions for you.

[macaddict0001]

Its not so much the alarms as it is the stickers they put on your windows and doors. I had some friends who had an alarm and lived in a high crime area, they were robbed frequently until they installed an alarm, then when they replaced the doors and stickers and stuff they got robbed again.

[Rob van dam]

Boys and girls thank you very much for the feedback.I didnt think anyone else replied to this thread since there was no notice in my inbox.Anway.To answer people's question.The alarm was a pain to deal with and the company no better.We got it a couple of years back as my mother had died and i guess we felt vulnerable for some reason and i guess we got suckered into purchasing it.At the end of the day it is costing us money with the weekly call outs and i spoke to a techie on another board who stated that it would cost about $70 to remove.As opposed to the $230 the company wanted.I am also suspect that this can be casuing problems with my dsl connection as its been quite a pain from time to time.(another story all together)

[Rob van dam]

Originally Posted by Spliffdaddy

The instruction manual and setup directions are available online. Just disable the telephone dialer via the keypad.

If you can find the model number on the control unit I can find the directions for you.

I appreciate your help.I just opened the box at night time and it blurted some jargon back at me.On the front of the box it only has the resllers name.

[euchomai]

I removed my alarm box because of it slowing down my DSL. I had a tech on the line that was running a live scan on my phone line, I just started pulling things out of the alarm box until the tech said, "there, that fixed it". Seriously, this is how I did it.

[Rob van dam]

Originally Posted by euchomai

I removed my alarm box because of it slowing down my DSL. I had a tech on the line that was running a live scan on my phone line, I just started pulling things out of the alarm box until the tech said, "there, that fixed it". Seriously, this is how I did it.

A "live scan".Do you mean like a phone trace

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by Rob van dam

A "live scan".Do you mean like a phone trace

No, a DSL tech at the central office was looking at his line parameters. They can do this in a number of ways.

I have had zero problems with DSL because of my alarm-the alarm tech that did the final hook up installed the whole-house filter himself (and for less than the DSL company would have wanted). That is THE way to go; dedicated home-run phone line to the DSL modem from a whole-house filter that also incorporates the alarm connection.

I should point out that our alarm not only monitors doors and windows, but a central smoke detector too. As we are often all out of the house for long parts of the day, it's good to know that one of us would get a notice if the smoke detector went off so we could see to our pets.