Why are building alarms not made with a auto cutoff?

Soldato
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Property down the street has had its alarm going off since early evening, a neighbour went down there to find the exact property, and its still going off now hours later.

Most councils seem to consider 20 minutes as the limit when I checked, and if an alarm goes off for longer they may take action, so with this in mind why arent alarms manufactured to auto stop at 20 minutes?

I have also never seen police attend to an alarm when its called in, probably due to the amount of occasions alarms go off due to faults.
 
Caporegime
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I don't understand how these are even legal to install. Normally you are crucified for making noise after 11pm by the council with police showing up and everything, yet you can have one of these alarms sounding for days at a time and nothing is done.
 
Soldato
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I don't understand how these are even legal to install. Normally you are crucified for making noise after 11pm by the council with police showing up and everything, yet you can have one of these alarms sounding for days at a time and nothing is done.

Yep that was what I was wondering as well, it seems its frowned upon to have alarms that operate in this way but not to manufacture and sell them, very odd, as a good law would cut the problem off at its source.
 
Soldato
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Property down the street has had its alarm going off since early evening, a neighbour went down there to find the exact property, and its still going off now hours later.

Most councils seem to consider 20 minutes as the limit when I checked, and if an alarm goes off for longer they may take action, so with this in mind why arent alarms manufactured to auto stop at 20 minutes?

I have also never seen police attend to an alarm when its called in, probably due to the amount of occasions alarms go off due to faults.

Ours stops around the 20min mark. It then re-sets the alarm.

The issue generally is that the instance that triggered the alarm (circuit broken, faulty PIR etc) then re-triggers it for another period. Since the reset takes just a second or two it seems like a continous alarm.
 
Permabanned
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BS4737 states a maximum of 20 minutes for private house and commercial premises alarms, and another British Standard for vehicle alarms states a maximum of 5 minutes. Quite what you can be done for if a fault occurs I have no idea. Probably noise nuisance? The alarm panel I fitted here didn't have a menu option for more than 20 minutes sounding.
 
Soldato
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Ours stops around the 20min mark. It then re-sets the alarm.

The issue generally is that the instance that triggered the alarm (circuit broken, faulty PIR etc) then re-triggers it for another period. Since the reset takes just a second or two it seems like a continous alarm.
I too suspect it's this. Happens all the time with cars too.
 
Caporegime
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Ours stops around the 20min mark. It then re-sets the alarm.

The issue generally is that the instance that triggered the alarm (circuit broken, faulty PIR etc) then re-triggers it for another period. Since the reset takes just a second or two it seems like a continous alarm.

A long cooldown would prevent such problems, also a fine per minute for noise disturbance after the original alarm was set off.
 
Soldato
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I don't understand how these are even legal to install. Normally you are crucified for making noise after 11pm by the council with police showing up and everything, yet you can have one of these alarms sounding for days at a time and nothing is done.

*Days*

The hyperbole on this forum just gets better :cry::cry::cry:
 
Soldato
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Also agree alarms that do this are a complete nuisance and should be banned.

A couple of years ago one started going off down the street at 4am, waking me up :mad:. Couldn't get back to sleep with it blaring away so went to have a look at the house and couldn't see anything up with it. Was still going off later that morning so reported it to the council noise complaints people who said they couldn't do anything for some reason but that the police could deal with it. Reported it to the police who also did nothing.

I think it was eventually sorted that evening when whoever lived there and had presumably been away came back and got an alarm company out.

It was so bloody annoying I felt very close to going round and actually breaking in to try and shut it up, which would really have defeated the purpose of the alarm :p

Edit: just remembered that I had an alarm that did this once. I can't remember the exact order of events, but after recently moving in to a rented house I got a call from the landlord during the day asking if I could go home and turn the alarm off as they'd had a complaint that the alarm was going off continuously. This rather surprised me because I'd been told by the estate agent that the alarm was non-functional, so hadn't set it and had no idea what the code was. Gave them permission to go in themselves as I was busy. A day or so later it started going off in the evening when I was at home after the power tripped. I think from memory it was doing something like going off whenever there was power (with some message on the screen about the battery power being low), but if I flipped the circuit breaker back off it immediately stopped going off, so I just left the power off for a bit and rang the landlord. I think I got the code off them and after turning the power back on and putting the code in it did stop. I think they managed to send a technician round the next day who did properly disconnect the alarm.

As I say, absolute nuisance!
 
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Soldato
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Also agree alarms that do this are a complete nuisance and should be banned.

A couple of years ago one started going off down the street at 4am, waking me up :mad:. Couldn't get back to sleep with it blaring away so went to have a look at the house and couldn't see anything up with it. Was still going off later that morning so reported it to the council noise complaints people who said they couldn't do anything for some reason but that the police could deal with it. Reported it to the police who also did nothing.

I think it was eventually sorted that evening when whoever lived there and had presumably been away came back and got an alarm company out.

It was so bloody annoying I felt very close to going round and actually breaking in to try and shut it up, which would really have defeated the purpose of the alarm :p
Well done on going around. I'm sure the neighbor was just as upset as you were.
 
Soldato
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Property down the street has had its alarm going off since early evening, a neighbour went down there to find the exact property, and its still going off now hours later.

Most councils seem to consider 20 minutes as the limit when I checked, and if an alarm goes off for longer they may take action, so with this in mind why arent alarms manufactured to auto stop at 20 minutes?

I have also never seen police attend to an alarm when its called in, probably due to the amount of occasions alarms go off due to faults.

I think a lot of that is because many houses are still running alarm systems that are 10-20 years old that are unlikely to cut off after X minutes. It also doesn't help with them being dumb alarms that you could be out for the day / away for the night etc and you wouldn't even know about it unless a neighbour has your contact details etc.

Most newer (smart) alarms built in the last 5 years or so have a cut-off, i think mines 8 minutes and will just re-arm itself and trigger again if one of its sensors are tripped. It's also a smart alarm and monitored so i'll get a notification wherever I am in the world (assuming i've got a data connection), and i'll also get a phone call from the monitoring company.
 
Soldato
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On a Google search for this, took me to another forum. A guy got fed up with the noise so donned with ear protectors, he climbed up a ladder, removed the cover and disconnected sounder. Then put a cheeky note attached to sounder and shoved through letter box.

The worst car alarms are those attached to the car horn!
 
Soldato
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I don't understand how these are even legal to install. Normally you are crucified for making noise after 11pm by the council with police showing up and everything, yet you can have one of these alarms sounding for days at a time and nothing is done.

Nonsense.

Empty office building across the street, the alarm started going off about lunchtime. Didn't stop after an hour, so I reported it to the council. Call back within a couple hours, an hour later they'd tracked down the building owner, given them a kick and got someone out to turn it off. Went off again about a week later, that time they were less understanding with the owner. It's been fine since.

If you don't report it, they can't do anything about it.
 
Soldato
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Does seem a bit pointless for the alarm to continue after say 20 mins. If no one has responded by then the thieves have likely gone and neighbours will continue to ignore it. Think the only alarms that make sense now are those that alert you on your phone either by being monitored or via an app.
 
Soldato
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I dont think its acts as a security benefit, so I dont know.

If an alarm keeps activating on so many occasions, most people just ignore them "oh its that same house again, must just be a fault". But of course alarms act as a security benefit, if a burglar had a choice he would pick a house without an alarm.
 
Soldato
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If they really wants what's in there, they'll take the risk. They cared not about the blaring alarm after breaking into my sisters house to find the keys for her car...

Edit : (They'd have probably worked out that the occupants were away on holiday BTW)
 
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