Security Horror Stories

The worst thing I ever come across was working as an apprentice. We got called to a pub in Hertfordshire who were having false alarms on a PIR in the upstairs lounge. Upon investigation I found the 8-core feeding the sensor had two cores choc-blocked onto another 6-core stapled up the wall. Wondering where the 6-core cable went, I traced it back. It went down the wall and was stapled across the skirting, before disappearing into the back of a mains socket. I still don't believe this to this day: the mains had been taken from the back of the socket and was joined into two cores of the same cable feeding the PIR. So brown and orange carried the 240v supply and the rest fed …

You'll like this one When I was servicing for the 'yellow favourites', I went to a house that had seen a canvasser, and a sub contractor, like many other unfortunates. A nice looking new-build with a shiny yellow box (with nothing inside it!) on the front, and a friendly mug answering the door. I started to service the "alarm". He'd not long moved in as there were no carpets down yet, so I could see the cables stapled to the bottom of the skirting boards. I kept quiet. Moving upstairs to the panel in the airing cupboard, I noticed something on the hardbord floor. I had to get down on my hands and knee to believe it....these cowboys had gone to the time and trouble to d…

Local alarm service has left the building... Mains comes to panel casing UNEARTHED But this is funny. Installer had put 2 PIRs and 1 MW in to one zone . PIR's were quite okay installed but MW like this !! Looking out the window. Propably because there are ladders next to window. This had caused ofcourse tons of FA's so installer as clever man had programed zone to NULL . It must have been very bright light in his head because that zone of three detectors were in the room where they had a safe full of money . Once and again this was one of those "quick visit"s, when you expect to be there for 15 minutes and find out that it took a day or two.

STORY #1 I received a call at out Technical Helpline some years ago, from an insurance company. The gentleman was a "technical advisor" being given the task of checking the validity of a health insurance claim. Their customer has claimed ill health because of the PIR installed in the kitchen, a room that she spends a lot of time in. The gentleman from the insurance company needed to know of any possible chance that the PIR (not even one of our models), could make the lady ill. Apparently when she spends long periods of time in front of this PIR, she feels light headed and often has to lie down for a number of hours to recover. She had seen marketing literature showi…

In the early years of my career I had the good fortune of attending some of the fire officers inspections of guest house's, pubs, night clubs, the such like. One afternoon we were inspecting a guest house on the seafront all had gone well, all the correct extinguishers, signs, and fire doors etc, so we finished earlier than expected. As we came outside the Fire Officer says " I know, the guest house across the road is due next week lets do it now and save coming back." At this point I feel I should explain that we were both dressed in plain cloths . We walked in to the guest house and stood by the reception. The landlady was dealing with some guest's and as we wai…

a couple of years back i was fitting a fire alarm system in a hotel my company sent me an apprentice he had only been in the game a few weeks so i thought ill give him something easy, so i sent him up into the roof space to drag a cable through next thing i know he comes back to me an hour later with a black eye and a cut lip and looking a bit worse for wear, it turns out that he had never been in a loft before and thought he was beeing clever walking on the big sections between the joists (thats right the plasterboard) he fell through the ceiling and into an occupied room of the hotel and landed right ontop of a women in bed, she screamed cos she thought she was being ra…

i passed on the coffee and biscuits!!

About 10 years ago me and my colleague where sent to install an alarm into a bungalow in Widnes Cheshire. Now my mate Ken is a total nutter, you wont believe this one. The customers were an old couple and very nice they were, they also had a king charles spaniel. This dog loved to help us passing us the wire cutters or screwdriver, then running away with them so we had to run around after this bloody dog, another feature of this animal was a constant yap and bark. An hour into the installation and 2 headaches, my mate ken had hold of the staple gun. Nice doggy nice floppy ears YES YOU GUESSED IT!!!! he stapled the dogs ears to a door frame, after about a minute of yelpin…

Was just reading the post about the bloke changing the consumer unit and the mains fuse, etc. reminded me of one of the scariest things I came across while serving my time (as a spark). Me & my tradesman (good guy, knew his stuff) called out to a house where RCD was tripping, board had been replaced by others a few years earlier. Switched off the main RCD and a motorised siren (it was 1986!) could be heard starting up. Customer gets his keys and disappears off to a cupboard to switch it off. Battery must be done I thought. Opened up consumer unit to find a 6 core entering the board. Green & yellow onto the earth block, blue & black onto the neutral block and…

Seeing all these posts about pipes reminded me of a story about an instalation that I did around 10 years ago. It was a Doctors surgery made up of two semi detached house,s knocked into one big house. The bit that caught me out was that because the building was built on a hill one half of the building was on a about 3ft difference in level, (The fact that I had been walking up and down three steps when traveling between the two buildings hadnt seemed to of sunk in). I was trying to run a cable between the two buildings, I was on the 1st floor of the 1st building in a cupboard that ran from floor to ceiling, the attached side of the property also had a cupboard that ba…

just visited a client who shall remain nameless - to cut a long story short one of their cameras had gone offline , so into the car i gets after making all the arrangements for when i get on site , 85 miles later there i am on site 30 feet up in the air on a cherry picker pulling open a junction box to get at the fuse spur inside - guess what no power - best bit is 2 sparkies turn up to borrow the cherry picker - promptly asks them to do me a favour and check the main board - 5 mins later they return in stitches turns out that a contractor had pulled all the mains feed to the board ( even though it had been marked up as security camera ) and then promptly got themselves k…

Loved all the stories in this section but thought it was time to mention one or two I've been witness to. When I started out about 10 years ago, I worked for a small company that mainly installed in council houses. All these stories happened during that time. Whilst installing with my then boss, we had an apprentice who was so smart he put a door contact on the hinge side of the door. OK! the really funny stuff then lol. NUMBER 1. During an install at a council house with my then boss, it was time to install the landing PIR detector. back in those days, I could have sworn that I posessed 'The Force' as I seldom had problems. Anyways, there was my boss, on top of…

I used to be s service engineer many many moons ago for Modern Alarms. I had a good mate called Alan and he was a really funny guy. He was a Londoner and he had the real gift of comedy. Anyway, one morning he received a call from our central station asking him to call an elderly lady about resetting a false alarm. This was in the days before mobile phones etc. It was 07:00 and Alan called this client. He took her details and set off for the house. Upon arrival he was b****cked stupid by the lady claiming "where have you been, I've been pressing the call button all night and you never arrived. In the end I had to use the telephone to contact you!" Alan was confused an…

This one happened about a year ago. I won't name anybody to avoid embarrasment. We manufacture a System called FG350, which is a microwave perimiter system, consisting of a Transmtter and Receiver which are located up to 200 Metres apart. They are similar in principle of operation to Active infra-red beams, but are higher security Microwave Detectors. A company had installed them at a site to protect a car compound, but had been unable to align them after repeated attempts. They were required to work at a distance of around 100 metres, which is well within the specified range. They had then brought them back to their offices where they had tried to set them up at a …

Got a call yesterday afternoon to attend a system which the user had been unable to silence. It was down as a 'must-be-done-today' as the customer was afraid it would go off again, and she would be unable to silence it. I was given a whole sob-story over the phone about the customer's situation - how her husband had left her, and she was really struggling, and that it was all just proving too much for her etc etc. I did feel for her - until I arrived on site. I asked what had happened, and apparently it just went off whilst unset. The customer could not remember her code (which I later discovered was 1234!), so she opened the panel. And cut the LIVE 220 volt feed!! …