Pay Attention to Alarm System Battery
Yesterday, I had the battery backup on my alarm system replaced. This is an item I don’t spend any time thinking about. When I received a letter from my alarm company advising I change out the battery, my initial reaction was that this was a sales ploy. If the alarm works, then the backup battery must be okay. Right?
Wrong! Neglecting this important item can have really bad repercussions.
The battery is intended to function when the electric grid fails – which, by the way, seems to be occurring more frequently in our area. Battery life drops off after four to five years. When fresh enough, the battery is designed to provide power for up to three days during a blackout. This “standby time” diminishes as the battery ages.
An older, weakened battery can cause overheating of the main computer board, the “brains” of the security system. This could result in spurious alarms and may create a condition where the system will not accept the activation/deactivation code because the memory has been scrambled.
Most alarming of all (I do not apologize for the pun), in the case of a power outage, the entire system can get fried when street power is re-established.
The moral of the story? Not replacing the battery in a timely manner could end up costing a whole new system.