Re: DIY - Sometimes....

[tourman <robercampbell@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Jan 4, 10:22 pm, "Robert L Bass" <RobertLB...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

2- Local alarms are next to useless and I won't waste my time and
> someone's money fixing a local system.

> We disagree on that point, Bob.  IMO (and that's all it is: my
> opinion), most thieves will run off right away when they hear a loud,
> exterior siren.  They don't know if the police have been called but
> they do know that anyone within earshot is likely to be paying
> attention.  Obviously, in high crime areas and some sparsely
> populated places that's not true, but in the kind of neighborhoods I
> worked in (primarily middle class to affluent residential) for over
> 20 years it certainly was.
>
> That's my opinion about burglar alarms.  Fire is a different story.
> If a fire erpupts and the homeowner is fast asleep or not around, the
> central station can often get the fire department out in time to save
> lives or property.
>
RHC: In our locale, exterior horns are strictly forbidden. A homeowner
with one can be charged if such a thing ever started to blare. As
such, alarms here ONLY have interior horns, which would serve to wake
up the homeowner in the event of a nighttime robbery (also quite rare
here). In the case of a fire, the alarm smoke detector would at least
wake up the homeowner to hopefully get him out of the house before
smoke overcomes him. So, yeah, local systems do serve a limited
purpose I suppose, but it seems to me, installing only a local system
is a bit like buying a luxury car and then equipping it with cheap
tires and a tiny engine.

I give my clients a complete rundown, including pictures, of the huge
investment in equipment, people and software that makes up a
professional monitoring station, and they quickly realize that the
hardware I install in their home is only a small part of their total
security picture.

But...hey...could be I've also become swayed by the "siren song of
RMR"....:))