Its 2:47am and you’re wondering to yourself what that noise is. Your spouse gives you a slight shove and “sweetly” suggests you answer the phone. You gingerly roll over and greet your caller with a grizzly “Hello?” Its the monitoring station and they are telling you that “Zone 3 is in alarm.”
But what is zone 3 you ask yourself? “How am I supposed to know what is causing the alarm when I don’t know what zone 3 is?” The operator on the other end tells you that the zone is listed as “Front & Garage Door/ Kitchen window.” Now its up to you to figure out which of those entries is the culprit of your current alarm.
If you have zones that are listed like this it means that your home alarm installer has doubled up on your zones. This is usually done as a result of the fact that your alarm panel only comes with 6 or 8 zones and you have more devices (motion detector, door and window contacts, smoke detectors, etc) than available zones so they decided the easiest way to install it was to put a few devices on one zone. In some instances, this isn’t an issue.
For example your basement windows in an unfinished basement. You can clearly look around and see all the windows and know which is the problem. But when these multiple zones are tied together it can be a logistical nightmare. Not only for you to figure out what went wrong, but for the repair technician being sent out to resolve any issue with the system.
The panel or brain of the system comes with a set number of zones it can supervise. DSC (www.dsc.com) has panels that support expansion modules allowing for 6 or 8 zones to grow into 16, 32 or 64 zones if needed. By having a zone assigned to a specific door, window, motion, smoke or flood detector it will make identifying the zone in alarm easier for the monitoring station, as well as assisting the technician in establishing where the issue is coming from. It directs them towards the problem area quickly so that it can be diagnosed and rectified in a timely fashion.
A technician should inspect the whole system while they are onsite (you are paying for their time and its usually at least 1 hour), but finding the problem zone or issue should be relatively easy if the system was set up and labeled clearly. The investment of a zone expander will save you time and money whether its servicing your system or responding to an alarm condition. Talk to your security provider, or potential security providers, about how they plan to set up your system. Remember at SecurU we are Working Together for a Safer Community.
