Security Horror Stories

I remember going to do an annual maintenance at a job in N Wales in the middle of nowhere. It was the worst entrance ever. I came around the corner and decided I would park up the drive at the side which had a plastic type roof over it. Well not realising the height of my small van. The T brackets stuck up that extra foot or so, when straight through the strip light and defuser. Should of heard the noise I s*** myself. The woman came out screaming thats the 2nd time that happened. I got constant abuse in my ear for 1 hour. Had to ring office and tell them the bad news. The light was replaced and all smiles in the end. Will not be doing that again in a hurry!

I heard one while on a training course, a engineer was drilling up through a floor in a house with a metre bit, he asked the young lad he was with to go upstairs and tell him when the bit showed through. After drilling all the way up to the chuck he asked the lad to check in the other bedroom to his supprise he saw the bed sheets spinning around. doh stright through the bed. (explain that one to the customer)

Our office is moving soon, so recently I updated the external lighting at our office. Time to get the PIR lighting working properly (we replaced the 300watt bulbs with 500watt ones and melted the relay contacts inside the PIR - oops!). I put up the new superdooper PIR (270 degree one that looks the business!) that could support the 1500watt load. After drilling the cable into the void above the ceiling, I removed the original PIR's cable to find a plug and socket and a round mains JB (junction box). I was wondering what the plug did - it had a single red wire going into it that looked like it had been stripped out of a T&E cable! After opening the JB all became c…

I am not a professional installer but I like to think that I know what I am looking at ... A relative bought a house which came with an alarm system. One evening they went out and came back about four hours later and the alarm was sounding. A neighbour complained to them that it had been sounding since just after they left the house. I popped round to have a look and this is what I found: Panel lid held on with insulating tape as the installer had tried to use a self-tapping security screw when a set screw should have been used causing it to strip the nut in the case. Panel mains supply taken via a 13A plug and an extension lead to a socket in the hall. Bell cut-off…

Mate told me this about a relative who rang the police on hearing a noise downstairs, police were in the area and disturbed the culprits, the house owner let the police in and joined them in the kitchen, culprits had started cooking something??? 6 pints of boiling water??? Police said, no they werent cooking, thats to throw on you when you come downstairs

Hi Guys: Just been out on a call to another firms customer, Set the scene: Old lady in her eighties had an Alarm fitted by her sons friend who is in the trade. Old lady has power cut and alarm bells ring, calls installer who has answer phone telling everyone that he is no longer in the trade and for service / repairs they should contact another engineer, this is where I come in as her daughter is a friend of the wife and calls begging me to go sort it out. Turns out said system has been in less than six months, am expecting nothing more than a duff battery (Ha Bloody Ha). When I get there the first look is enough to tell me I aint gonna like it. The list of things foun…

Why the bloody hell do new builds have plastic water pipes in hollow plaster board walls? There I was installing in a brand new house, no furnature, carpets or other obstructions.. great I thought, be out of here and in the pub by 3, (it was a saturday) I'm in the kitchen, mounting the PIR to the wall top corner. My labourer is upstairs fixing down cables, doing well i thought, lets fix this PIR properly, ie not use the ceiling bracket, one hole ok, lower case hole, straight into a hidden pipe bent within the wall at mains pressure, I got half soaked, the cooker on the opposite side of the room got drenched, the floor was covered in a film of water, fortunatly for me I …

It was 11:30 on xmas eve 2001 and the phone rings, "Hello, is this the Engineer on call weve had a break in and we need you to come out straight away" the keyholder didnt even know where the main control panel was, he just noticed the keypad was dead, so of Cliff (A fellow Engineer) sets armed with a few new fuses. Anyway he gets on site just after 12 midnight to find yeah they had been broken into, and guess what he found was stolen.......? The Alarm Control Panel.......?. Needless to say someone had stolen the main control panel and all the paperwork inside it, all he had was 50 cut of wires and no wiring schedule, they`d even taken the redcare unit. The intruders…

Hey All, Was on call christmas day when at about 11pm i received a call out from our monitoring station for a nursing home in windsor reporting a smoke detector bleeping, called customer who was a temporary warden who told me that a smoke detector in one of the residents flats was beeping, ( I knew the site as serviced it before, it was an addressable system) asked the client what the panel was saying she said nothing only green healthy light illuminated. explained that if the panel wasnt showing a fault then it wasnt anything to do with fire alarm but she insisted i attended. So off i go after explaing that id be bout 1 1/2 hrs due to living in sussex, Got to site a…

Found this and a lot more, nearly as bad, on a job I'm upgrading at the moment with 17 RIO's and about 86 zones the rest of the system is allot like this but I had to show you this. IF YOU ARE EASILY OFFENDED LOOK AWAY NOW (You might have to zoom to see the writing)

This is a telephone conversation about an external prox reader for an Intruder Alarm. PSG = Product Support Guy Me: Hi, can I ask you a few questions about the ABC external prox reader, please? PSG: Sure. Me: I have a system fitted with two entrances and two of your older type external prox readers. One of them packed up, and you don't make it any more, so I ordered one of your newer ones. PSG: Okay..... Me: Right, I fitted it as per the instructions, but those instructions are very basic. There's no information on what I should program the keypad o/p to. PSG: Uh, what keypad o/p? There is no o/p. Me: The keypad o/p. On the diagram, it shows two leads coming out o…

I had a call of a sort of friend who thinks he is an engineer, he was asking me why he had to go round all the PA buttons in this house to set the alarm off........ He had wired them all in paralel!

I was told this story first hand, but that don't make it true! An engineer and apprentice where fitting out a bungalow. The apprentice was in the loft and the engineer was drilling holes into the ceiling for the cables to be passed up. Drilling in one corner the drill popped thru the ceiling. There was a scream and after some tugging the drill came out spraying blood around the room! " Oh my God I've drilled into his foot!" Running up to the roof space the engineer finds the apprentice pointing towards the corner where a half dead rat is lolling about. The apprentice said he lifted the loft insulation back just as the poor rat got drilled and screamed as it was fl…

Hi, Another set of (not so) funny pictures... This time, I've took them in a school, where the entire fire alarm system is being reinstalled and rewired. It's a huge job, that wil last at least a year and a half. You can see the two sets of two photoelectric detectors at each side of the videoprojector in front of the room, the idea is to have the old system functionnal while the new one is being installed. To be up to the latest regs, they are installing red beacons additionnally to the sirens, for people who have a hearing problem. This is one of the rooms of the school: (sorry for the bad panorama, but everything that needs to be seen is here) The aim of the r…

Hi ! Ok, this one is not security related but it shows how people can do stupid and irresponsible things when wiring stuff. I would like to show you a picture that a took a few weeks ago in a rather big gymnasium. This picture show something was behing the toilets, in a box that can be opened easily to adjust the temperature of the showers that are located just next to the toilets. Presumably a lot of people are changing the temperature on a daily basis. Some of them may be wet, of course. Try to guess what's hidden by the black rectangle: Ready ? SURPRISE I wonder how it feels touching an earthed pipe and a live wire while being wet... We can even see the gree…