DiyAlarmTinkerer

I'm not sure if I'm missing something or if you're just taking the piss. That sucks. Is it simple enough to test the state of the rectifier with a multimeter?

How do I power it down? I'd be happy to go with this option. Ah, I see. They're meant to trickle-charge 24/7 usually and never go flat? So there is either a problem with the charging circuit or the battery is a dud and no longer holds a charge? For the sake of £10, is it worth attempting a new battery in case of the latter? Haha. Given the consumer unit was installed several decades before I puchased the property, I very much doubt I'd be able to find that electrician even if I tried.

Thanks @JimD. I moved the video to private for privacy after we established that it doesn't have the fused spur that everybody here is focusing on. It's good to know that I can silence it with the user code - the manual doesn't go into much detail about what the user code can/cannot do - I was very concerned about it getting into tamper mode and me not being able to disable it again. I think my plan of action, in order, is going to be: Replace the battery so that the alarm doesn't sound after a short power cut (Now that I know I can silence the tamper alarm when it goes off) Attempt the default engineer code so that I can adjust the bell timeout to something relatively short (mostly so I have the peace of mind that if it ever did sound that it wouldn't sound forever and keep the neightbours up until I returned home) Get an electrician/alarm-person in to fix up the general alarm setup (There is also a panic button near the door that I want removed)

Haha, yeah the consumer unit is in a pretty **** state. The house is 100 years old, there are several generations of electrics running through these walls. Nevertheless, what are my options here regarding the alarm? The only thing I want to acheive is to ensure that the alarm does not ring out indefinately if there is ever a powercut and piss off the neighbours (The manual, if I'm reading it correctly, says it only sounds for 20 minutes by default, but I don't know whether this has been changed or whether I'm even reading the manual correctly).

I chipped them plenty of money. The joys of moving house during the pandemic ? Is this alarm/setup terrible then?

I'm not sure what to tell you. Maybe I'm being stupid, but I can't see anything that looks like a fused spur anywhere near the panel or anywhere between the consumer unit and the panel. I took a video, maybe you can see something that I'm missing? (There is nothing behind the mirror)

Like one of these things? https://www.screwfix.com/p/lap-13a-unswitched-fused-spur-white/58938 As far as I can tell, there is not one of these (As a side note, wouldn't every burglar just take out the fuse as soon as they entered a property if these were beside the panel?)

Thanks for the reply. I don't actually care about having a working system. I just don't want the siren erroneously sounding endlessly at any point. I wish I could power it down completely as you say, but the alarm system is on the same circuit as my lighting so switching it off at my consumer unit would mean also foregoing lighting in my house ? I also guess that having lights on the bell outside is also a minor deterrent. Is there any risk in attempting to press PROG and #### to see whether the default code was left set? What would happen if I did this and the code was wrong? Would the alarm trigger and I'd have no way of disabling it?

I moved house and it has an old "ADE Optima Compact" burglar alarm (Not the newer revised versions "G3"/"G4", I assume the one I have is the original). I am unable to find anybody online with the exact same model. If there is a powercut, the alarm is completely deactivated. However, once the power returns the alarm sounds. If I enter my user code, it disables the alarm and goes back to normal. As I understand it, this means that the battery is dead. I don't know much about burglar alarms, but from what I saw online about similar models, it should be as simple as unplugging one battery and replacing it with another. My only concern comes from the fact that every tutorial I see first starts with the person entering the engineer code to set the unit into engineering mode. As I understand it, this means that tamper detection gets disabled and also allows one to change the setup of the system. The problem I am facing is that I do not know this engineer code - I have no information about who installed the system ~30 years ago and they have likely gone out of business since anyway. Therefore, I assume that the moment I open up the case the alarm will sound and I will not be able to disable it (Even if I turn off the mains power first I assume the moment I connect the battery the alarm will sound). I see in the manual that there is a default code of ####. However I am concerned that entering this incorrectly will also cause the alarm to sound if it was changed away from the default. All I simply want to do is avoid the alarm going off endlessly in the case where there is a power cut and therefore be disturbing my neighbours until I return home. How should I proceed here?