What are home alarms for, other than driving your neighbours up the wall?

[Spectric]

We used to have job migration where people moved to find work, up here people tried to move to escape areas that have a high risk of flooding and now a new trend could be to escape living in fear of burgulary, it does look like our police forces are not much more use than a blunt chiesel.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

The irritating thing around here is that the plod are usually perfectly aware who the thieves are. There are traveller (who don't travel) and gypsy (who aren't gypsy) sites they won't venture on so just give you a crime number.

 

[Richard_C]

I used to live in a detatched house in a village near a motorway junction on the M56. Burglaries happened fairly regularly: steal car, off the motorway, burgle a few houses, go back onto motorway, whoosh. Mostly small scale stuff, cash, VCRs and so on.

If we went out for an evening I used to leave a light or two on, a radio upstairs because burglers can't easily peer in to see if there really is a person in the house, and a free with a Sunday paper Gene Pitney CD on repeat in the sitting room. Awful noise. 24 hours from Tinnitus and similar songs. Never burgled. I still have the CD and sometimes do the same thing even though we are in a much lower risk area.

I can confidently report a 100% correlation between not being burgled and having a Gene Pitney CD playing - based on a fairly small sample, so may not be statistically valid.

(but I do agree with the general observation that you can't prevent unless you choose to live in a fortress, you can only deter so they go elsewhere)

 

[Inspector]

A lot of people don't want to pay the monthly fee's so take a cheaper option rather than a system professionally installed and monitored that would give a lot more peace of mind. Whats the monthly charge in Canada?

I'm too far in the boonies so don't have one. The response time would be so long they could empty my shop. The neighbour is retired RCMP and he doesn't hesitate to jump in his truck and challenge any suspicious vehicles in the area. His dogs alert him.

As near as I can tell after paying for the installation the charges start at about $30Cad a month and up depending on the system.

If I lived in the city I would get a monitored system. A few weeks after a friend on the West Coast passed away last summer his house was burgled while his wife and nephew were asleep. The teen slept through it but the wife woke up to some sounds and went to look and found a guy in the house. He grabbed his bag of phones, laptops and their car keys. He tried to take the pickup truck and it wouldn't start so he moved to her SUV. She caught up to him there, tried to stop him, he belted her in the eye, knocking her to the ground, and took off. Cops came and filled out a report. Her daughter monitored the cell phones and when it was activated the next day, found the location and called the RCMP detective assigned to burglary. They busted him but not before he had already got rid of some of the stuff. He lived about 8 to 10 miles away and had to have been dropped off. An alarm would have woken her as he was trying to get in and likely stopped him. Now she has a good system, monitored, with cameras in several locations covering the house and shop.

It isn't always about protecting your things.

Pete

 

[Spectric]

A few weeks after a friend on the West Coast passed away last summer his house was burgled while his wife and nephew were asleep.

We seem to be given the impression Canada is a lovely place with great scenery and opportunities with very low rates of crime, is that just a ruse to get younger brits to emigrate!

 

[Inspector]

We seem to be given the impression Canada is a lovely place with great scenery and opportunities with very low rates of crime, is that just a ruse to get younger brits to emigrate!

Crime is every where in every country. Some areas are the never lock the door places and others should be bombed into oblivion. We are no different.

Pete

 

[Sandyn]

Blah blah blah. There's a certain class of moaner who just wants to pick holes in everything, hence my comment that it's about having multiple layers of security, not relying on any one. Beyond that it's about making your house look like it's not worth the effort so the scrotes move on elsewhere. The vast majority are opportunists, and being lit up or barked at isn't much their thing.

Lighten up for goodness sake, It's all in fun and we all do it.
One of your comments, for example:-" Is he still banging on about that lying, fad-diet-book-shilling quack? " You need people to pick holes in things. That's what forums are about.

 

[Sporky McGuffin]

Lighten up for goodness sake,

I suppose my battle unicorn comment was rather over serious.

 

[Sandyn]

I suppose my battle unicorn comment was rather over serious.

I would never actually do anything like that to a dog, they are the best companions.
Years ago, a friend of mine has this dog kind of creature, like a huge set of teeth with a leg at each corner. He kept it in his transit as a deterrent to anyone who might think of staling his van. If you approached the van, the dog would go crazy and literally throw itself against the window to try to bite bits off you. At that time I had absolutely no fear of any animal having been brought up on a farm. I bet him I could get into the van. I simply approached the van, dog was going crazy. I opened the door slightly and eased myself inside the van. The dog just acted as if I wasn't there and continued barking at others outside the van, using me as a stepping stone.

 

[Stevekane]

I share your thoughts about alarms, car or house they just get ignored,,,but Im hoping that the burgler might be a bit jumpy and the noise might be enough to frighten them away. As to big vicious dogs, I certainly wouldn't want to be responsible for one,,,say the bugger got out and mauled someone,,,what about a small dog, bright and alert and makes a lot of noise,,,wouldn't that be just as good and less dangerous?
Locks are a starnge one, when renewing our house insurance they ask if all windows have locks and doors 5 lever mortice locks,,which they dont,,last year I asked the guy what difference would it make, might be worth fitting them,,and to both his and my surprise it made no difference to the price at all!
Maybe would be different if we lived in a high crime area?
Steve.

 

[Sporky McGuffin]

My two dogs are big but total softies. They do both have good deep growls and barks though. I think that's a good combination.

 

[Robbo3]

Best thief deterrent in our road was when I installed my IP cameras.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

My neighbour had his van done and went to the plod with the clip of the the miscreant (who was known to them) grinning and sticking his middle finger up to the camera. They gave him a crime number as the picture "wasn't clear enough".

 

[docw]

I used to live in a detatched house in a village near a motorway junction on the M56. Burglaries happened fairly regularly: steal car, off the motorway, burgle a few houses, go back onto motorway, whoosh. Mostly small scale stuff, cash, VCRs and so on.

If we went out for an evening I used to leave a light or two on, a radio upstairs because burglers can't easily peer in to see if there really is a person in the house, and a free with a Sunday paper Gene Pitney CD on repeat in the sitting room. Awful noise. 24 hours from Tinnitus and similar songs. Never burgled. I still have the CD and sometimes do the same thing even though we are in a much lower risk area.

I can confidently report a 100% correlation between not being burgled and having a Gene Pitney CD playing - based on a fairly small sample, so may not be statistically valid.

(but I do agree with the general observation that you can't prevent unless you choose to live in a fortress, you can only deter so they go elsewhere)

I am far from a career criminal, but if I were I would certainly steer clear of any address playing non stop Gene Pitney. Your small sample has just doubled in size!

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Gene Pitney? They are attempting to disperse crowds in NZ by playing loudly .............................. Barry Manilow and James Blunt.

 

[dangles]

At the time my main problem with it was that those dogs would have no life. Just the cage and sometimes the courtyard.... no walks, no interaction with people or other dogs etc. And they apparently cost thousands per dog due to time training etc. Most 'pets' would calm down after a few minutes or getting used to seeing you, these ones kept chucking themselves into the cage sides with their teeth out

These wouldn't make very good guard dogs if they wore dentures.

 

[Fergie 307]

I have an easy way to disable this type of alarm:

Fairly basic dog training to get your dog to only take food on command, and from people it knows. My Dobermans would sit in front of their bowls drooling, with a pained " come on dad what's the hold up here? " expression on their faces, but wouldn't touch it until they were told.

 

[Spence1818]

Home alarms are there to provide jobs for the sales team and the fitters as well as drive the neighbours mad.

 

[Fergie 307]

And upvote for the gravel drive, dogs go nuts as soon as anyone walks across it.
As for alarms, a well installed system should really have very few false alarms. Only time it's happened with mine was when they were doing some work on the sub station up the road and we had a few very brief power cuts, which set it off.
But I agree you will never prevent someone getting in if they really want to, the trick is just to make yours a less attractive proposition. I have beams and PIR detectors on the workshop so you can't get closer than about eight feet away before it goes off. All high enough not to be triggered by the dogs. When I first tried this used to get false activations from bats, we have a lot of bats! A friend made up a circuit board so that the interruption has to last a full second or so before it will trigger it, rather than being instant, never been a problem since.

 

[Zedgeezer]

It is astonishing what they have done to German Shepherds - we were given one which, after it bit everyone and everything (guess why we were given it?) we finally gave it back to the breeder, who enthusiastically took it back to breed even more insane, deranged dogs. It was one of the Crufts "designer dog" versions, rather than a proper scrapyard Alsatian.

I really don't want to start a whole German Shepherd thread, but I have to say I've owned, loved, bred and shown them for 40+ years. Properly bred they are a bombproof, loving, loyal breed to own if they are responsibly bred. The British Army had much respect for them in World War 1 when they were used by the German Army, and brought many back to the UK. These "Imports" founded the Alsatian we knew in the 1970's, but in the 1920's, politically they couldn't be called anything with the word German so they were renamed "The Alsace Lorraine Dog" (the area of France where they were believed to come from) which evolved through "The Alsace'aine" to "Alsatian". Due to the lack of cross breeding between the two nations, each nation chose the characteristics they most wanted. The Germans evolved a strongly curved spine with a low back end, the British went with a large chest, flatter back, and imposing presence, but both were (Genetically) the same breed. The problems with the British Alsatian came in the 1970's when a sudden popularity meant any two Alsatians were mated with no care for quality because profit was involved (let's call it the scrap yard dog). As breeders we have turned this around to return this breed to its rightful stature, but because of the current ability to easily move show dogs to shows anywhere within Europe (and there is obviously serious money in winning at Crufts), and the breed officially being called the German Shepherd Dog, German judges, judging German Shepherd Dogs are never going to make an English Alsatian best of breed over a Germanic GSD. There are a few UK breeders still trying to breed what we believe to be the true UK GSD / Alsatian but most are swayed by selling puppies which are bred from German Crufts show winners because that is where the money is. When we bought our last GSD puppy we had to make a lot of phone calls to breeders (and we knew the questions to ask) before one pointed us to a possible breeder in Northumberland, 300 miles from us. We made the journey to check the litter out, only to find the puppies were Great Grand Children of a dog we had bred 15 years earlier (my favourite GSD ever). At that point it became a no brainer.
Final point: GSD's / Alsatians are an excellent dog to own if you want a dog that is intelligent, family loving, naturally protecting of that environment, and alert at all times, the rest of the nasty traits are trained in by ignorant trainers / owners who don't care about the breed, they are just after money.