Open fires, heaters, electric blankets, clothes driers and overloaded power points are all potential fire risks during winter. So here are some great tips to ensure you and your family stay safe over the cooler months. And be sure to take a look at our great smoke alarm offer too.

Ideally these should be in every bedroom and the hallways. With monitored smoke detectors:

• you'll be alerted to, and protected from, smoke and fire 24/7 whether you are at home or not;

• your property will be monitored even when your security system is not set;

• ADT will summon the fire service and call you and your listed contacts immediately.

2. Heating

Remember the heater-metre rule: keep furniture, clothes and curtains at least one metre away from heaters and fireplaces.

3. Electric blankets

Always turn off your electric blanket at the wall before getting into bed. Have blankets checked annually by a competent service person.

4. Power points

Don't overload power points or multi-boxes. Use multi-boxes with circuit breakers.

5. Ashes

Ashes can take up to five days to cool. Place in a metal container, well clear of your home.

6. Fire escape plan

Work out an escape plan to suit your home and talk about it with everybody in the house. Practice your escape plan at least every six months.

Remember, you need to:

• have working smoke alarms;

• know two ways out of every room if possible;

• make sure that doors and windows are clear and easy to open. And that there is a safe way to reach the ground, including from upper floors;

• keep keys in deadlocks at all times when home;

• have an outside meeting place, such as a letterbox or a special tree;

• make special plans for young children and older people.

7. Maintain your smoke alarms

• Dust in the smoke alarm can stop it working and cause nuisance alarms. Gently dust the alarm with a vacuum cleaner brush every six months. Detach or unscrew the smoke alarm first, being careful not to touch the sensors.

• Test wireless smoke alarms each month by pushing the test button to ensure it beeps. You may need to use a broom handle. Change the battery when required.

8. Replace old smoke alarms

Smoke alarms that are ten years old are near the end of their service life and should be replaced. A smoke alarm constantly monitors the air 24 hours a day. At the end of 10 years, it has gone through over 3.5 million monitoring cycles. After this much use, components may become less reliable. This means that as the detector gets older, the potential of failing to detect a fire increases. Replacing them after 10 years reduces this possibility.

For more information

If you need either a new or replacement monitored smoke alarm, or want your smoke alarms connected to your alarm monitoring system, go to www.adtsecurity.co.nz or contact ADT on 0800 111 238.

There's also loads of interesting tips and information at http://www.fire.org.nz/home_kids/tips/smokealarm.htm

http://www.adtsecurity.co.nz/home_security/hsc

THE FOUR PRINCIPLES OF PROTECTION


At ADT, our aim is to deliver the very best security and protection for you and your family. We do this by focusing our attention on the four principles below, and we’re constantly refining and improving these based on our local and international experience. Also below, we answer some of the most frequently asked questions about our alarm monitoring service.

1. Deterrence

When a potential intruder sees the highly visible window stickers and yard signs announcing that your home is secured by ADT, they’ll know you’re well protected and in most circumstances move on to an easier target. Intruders are very opportunistic. They’ll target those homes that seem the most vulnerable. So an ADT Security system is a very effective deterrent.

2. Minimising loss

In the unlikely event that an intruder does ignore your ADT window stickers and enters your home, they’ll be assaulted by a shrill siren to drive them off. This drastically reduces the time they have to seriously compromise your property and they’ll flee rather than risk getting caught.

3. Avoiding confrontation

Not only do we want to tell the intruder to leave, we want anyone in the home to be made aware of the risk so they can take appropriate action. This is where some of our innovations like door chime can be a blessed asset. In addition, we want you and your family to feel secure when entering an empty home after school or in the evening, so our alarms indicate if there has been an intrusion. In the unusual circumstance there has been a forced entry, an ADT Mobile Patrol Officer can visit and ensure the home is safe before you re-enter it, and talk with you before you return to the home.

4. Enhanced fire protection

A burglar will pick and choose what he’ll take, but a fire is indiscriminate. With monitored smoke detectors, you significantly increase your chances of saving lives, personal property and those items you can't replace. Our monitored smoke detectors can detect and alert you and the Fire Service to a smouldering fire in its early stages, which means that even if you are still asleep the Fire Service may already be on the way. In addition, you’ll have peace of mind knowing your home will be monitored for smoke even when you’re away; and your smoke detection system is on even when the intrusion system is off, giving you 24/7 protection.

Your monitoring questions answered

Our Monitoring Team are the experts who respond to all activations of your alarm 24/7 and ensure that your ADT security system is regularly checked and in perfect working order. Here are some answers to the questions they get asked most regularly.

Q. If an intruder entered my home, the alarm went off and the intruder forced me to disarm the alarm, how would ADT know that it wasn't a false alarm?

A. You’d need to use your Duress code* to disarm the alarm. Duress codes appear on the ADT monitoring team's screens as a Priority 1 response. Standard operating procedures are to send an ADT Mobile Patrol Officer immediately, unless you have specified other instructions. * A Duress code is determined by you and the installer at the time of installation. If you wish to change or update your duress code, simply phone ADT’s customer service team on 0800 111 238. If you have an ADT alarm, ADT may be able to change this using remote access technology to assist you. Otherwise a technical service visit will be required.

Q. What happens when my alarm goes off accidentally, but I quickly disarm it with my user code? Why don't I hear from ADT?

A. ADT's monitoring system receives the alarm activation signal and watches for a reset within 60 seconds. If the alarm hasn't been reset within 60 seconds, the alarm goes through to our Monitoring team's screens and is responded to according to your contact instructions.

If you unset the alarm within 60 seconds, the alarm/unset is recorded in our system but not responded to.

Q. Why does the system wait 60 seconds?

A. Internationally it's been determined that 60 seconds is the optimum time to allow a person to reset their alarm in the event it has gone off accidentally. This wait-time eliminates needless calls from ADT and patrols from being dispatched to accidental alarms, as we focus on actioning real events that have occurred as at the 60 second cut off. It also eliminates the associated costs of unnecessary patrol responses being charged to our customers, which is good news for you.

Q. Why does my keypad or alarm panel chirp at odd hours in the morning?

A. It may mean that there’s been a communications failure during a timer test (see below).

Q. What is timer testing?

A. Timer testing is when your security system regularly ‘checks in’ with ADT's monitoring system. ADT’s monitoring system is programmed to expect a signal from your security system at a certain time – which confirms that your panel is communicating with the monitoring centre. This is an important part of our on-going monitoring of your property 24/7.

The frequency of timer testing is programmed into your security system by the installer. Generally it’s every 24 hours for businesses and every 7 days for residential customers, and the testing is usually programmed to occur during the night when the telephone line is unlikely to be in use.

If your phone line is engaged, or there’s a problem with the communications line, you might hear a beeping emit from the alarm panel/keypad. If you check your keypad it should indicate that there’s a communications failure.

Don’t worry, if this occurs, ADT will contact you regarding any communications failure the next day, during normal business hours. The call highlights the need to check your phone line. It may be that you have had work done on your phone line that has affected communications between your alarm and the monitoring centre, or perhaps you live in a rural area where telecommunications are often inconsistent.

But if everything’s working well, it’s quite likely that you’d never know ADT's monitoring system is regularly checking your alarm functionality!

A perfect example of this is one of our long-standing customers from the South Island who is blind, suffers from asthma and a number of other health conditions. Although he has the company of a caregiver during the day, he's alone at night. But having a NevaAlone pendant gives him the confidence that should he need assistance, ADT is always there. As they were when he needed them one evening in April.

It was around 6.30pm when Raj Sandhu, one of ADT's monitoring centre operators, responded promptly to a medical alarm. Raj was able to speak with our customer who advised he could not breathe and needed an ambulance, which Raj organized immediately. Raj was also able to pass on all relevant information to the ambulance staff so that they were fully aware of the customer's health conditions, saving precious time in determining his first aid treatment.