Intruder alarms

[ruedeleglise]

Any legal legislation concerning the installation or functioning of alarms, as in England?

[Richardbk]

If you have one fitted, there may be a time limit on the duration of an external siren,but apart from that if you buy one in France it will be OK.  In terms of 'best practice' and alarm installation guides this really depends on whether it makes a difference to your house insurance - generally it does not.

Last year we had a surveillance alarm system fitted  by ADT www.adt-securite.fr with 24hr monitoring to our house in Ile de France. Everything else was basic common sense. The main alarm unit is protected by a sensor and power and telephone connections are hidden. The rest is fairly straight forward these days since most alarms are wireless. We have either window/door sensors or infrared for rooms with possible entry points. If you have a large dog that will stay in the house, special infrared sensors are required for the places he will go. In addition this is a monitored system so there are only internal sirens ; to kill the ear drums - few people actually react to an external alarm.

They suggested there was no point having sensors upstairs - something like 85% of all break ins are via the front door and in any case all potential theives will always try to visit all rooms of the house.

Some monitoring companies actually send somebody around to your house, but the most effective in a rural/semi rural area is simply to have a list of good friends and neighbors that the system can alert automatically by telephone and who can go round and check to see if there is a real problem.

regs

Richard