If our control room has not received a test signal from your alarm system in a 7 day period the control room will contact you to test your security system.
What does this mean ?
The radio transmitter or telephone dialer which is part of your security system has a built in clock that automatically sends a test signal to our control room whenever there has been no activity on your alarm for a period of 7 days. This obviously may be an indication that there may be a problem with the security system as it is not sending a signal. The alarm could therefore fail to send a signal in the event of a burglary.
Why does this happen?
There are a number of reasons for this
- The battery in your security system may be reaching the end of its life. The average life span of a battery is between 12 months and 36 months depending on the quality of battery.
- A metal may have been installed in close proximity to the radio transmitter which causes interference with the radio signals. e.g. Safe, metal table
- A large metal structure has recently been erected / built in the vicinity of the premises which can cause radio interference, e.g. Carport.
- Fire extinguishers placed in close proximity to the radio transmitter. which can cause radio interference.
- Faulty Radio Transmitter. Please note there is no cost to you as the client to replace a faulty radio.
These problems can all be identified and resolved by one of our technicians.
It is of upmost important to maintain the good working order of the security system at all times.
Clients will usually be contacted between the hours of 6:30 am and 8:00 pm to do a system test.
Please note that not all security systems have this function, especially older alarm systems that are old. If you wish to confirm if your alarms system has a fail to test function please contact our control room.
We do hourly tests on GSM signal (GSM only as low costs and low power consumption) so that the GSM will send an hourly test signal and our control room monitors it for every three hourly tests (three test signals within a three hour period) on our side (Fail to Test after three hours).
This contingency allows for a missed test signal due to cell network going down for a short time which happens quite often. This is a last resort setup should there be a burglary and the keyholder does not come out, Armed Reaction can only check from outside, burglars have broken in where Armed Reaction cannot see and the alarm has been destroyed (Alarm Panel ripped off the wall and broken) . This will be a final indication that there is a serious problem and keyholder/s needs to come out to open up for Armed Reaction.
This has worked in the past and reduced the amount of loss for clients, although the amount of loss would have been reduced significantly if the keyholders would have come out on notification of the first alarm.
