On Monday, 27 January 2020 09:30:10 UTC, Martin Brown wrote:
On 27/01/2020 02:59, tabbypurr wrote:
On Sunday, 26 January 2020 23:56:54 UTC, JoeJoe wrote:
We have a wired house alarm that was already in place when we bought the
house some 15 years ago.

It has several movement sensors around the house, a large metal case
that all the wires come out of that holds a large backup battery and the
circuitry, and a control panel.

Weve used it several times many years ago, but after it went off around
the clock whilst we were away on holiday and kept our very friendly
neighbours up for days, we stopped using it altogether. It hasnt been
used for many years, but is still connected, and the lights on the panel
are on (alarm disabled).

Last night it went off at 3am (not amused - luckily I managed to
remember the code to reset it). By the look of it there was a short
power cut just prior to it going off.

Is it possible that this was caused by the backup battery not holding
charge any more? We cant remember for certain, but we believe that
more than 10 years ago we had a similar incident and the alarm guy came
and replace the battery, and everything has been well ever since. It is
also very possible that the last time we have had a power cut was that
previous incident some 10 years ago.

Power cut with dead backup battery will put the external bell box into a
state where it thinks someone is up to no good and ringing.

Also, what does it take to disable it altogether? i.e. completely
disconnected from power etc. We plan to move away in the near future,
so would like to leave the new owners the option to reconnect it easily
if they so wish.

disconnect mains power
disconnect battery
if there's another battery in bellbox, disconnect or wait it out until flat.
it will be silent.

That is bad advice. It will almost certainly go off in panic mode and
the external bell will ring continuously until its battery dies.

Most likely the bellbox battery is dead. If not it will ring briefly until OP disconnects the battery. That should only take a minute. A perfectly effective method.


If it is a half decent alarm it will have an anti-tamper microswitch in
the main control panel that will go off immediately when you try to open
it. The procedure is put it into engineering mode with a code and take
out the correct screw from the panel first. If you have watched your
service engineer carefully enough then you will know which one it is.

You need the engineering service manual for the unit to know the right
details for any given system.

OP doesn't need anything more than a ladder and basic hand tools, and is presumably asking because they don't have the info you specify. If they do, great, they already know how to do it easily & silently.


NT