Best way to get rid of an old Concorde Phonewatch alarm - and codes?

MuffinsDa

We have an old sitcom phonewatch alarm in the house (came with the house) that has been disconnected from monitoring for over 7 years. It has given us various troubles, and we have never -even once!- used it.

At this stage we want to get rid of it completely.

First problem is I don't have the engineer's code for it, and Phonewatch won't give it to me despite me having the password etc. They once helped me turn a warning off years ago and ran through a serious of default codes and I think one of them worked but not sure which one. So the questions are:

1. Is there a list of default engineer codes somewhere that I can try?

2. What is the best way of powering the system down completely without setting it off for extended periods of time. Here are the particulars:

- External bellbox very high and difficult to get to.
- Main box (inside) very accessible, so have no problem taking the battery out and disconnecting power to it.
- But I understand if I do the above it'll set off the external bell box, right? what is the best way of stopping/minimising that aside from climbing up and taking its battery out (not sure how easy it is!).

Your help with this would be greatly appreciated and will go some way towards saving my marriage :-))

Alternatively if you think it's a job best left to an electrician any recommendation for one in south dublin / north wicklow would be great, as well as an idea on what would be a fair price that I should expect to pay for this.


Thanks in advance!

kub

You cannot just employ anyone to work on it as if you do you have to ensure they have a PSA licence, otherwise you could expose yourself to the wrath of the nice people in PSA.

The vast majority of Sector/ Eircom phonewatch systems had decoy external siren units, powering down your system will very quickly establish if this is the case and if so all you have to do is power the system up again.

So disconnect the battery and pull the power and see what happens.

For some crazy reason, no doubt financial though, Phonewatch consider an external sounder an optional extra.

MuffinsDa

Thanks kub.

I think it does have an external siren unfortunately but I'll double check.

Would it be possible to somehow "decommission" it prior to disconnection if I had the codes? I seem to remember some people her might have had the default codes a while a go....

KoolKid

If you power it down completely the external bell will stop after 15-20 minutes anyway.

altor

MuffinsDa wrote: »

We have an old sitcom phonewatch alarm in the house (came with the house) that has been disconnected from monitoring for over 7 years. It has given us various troubles, and we have never -even once!- used it.

At this stage we want to get rid of it completely.

First problem is I don't have the engineer's code for it, and Phonewatch won't give it to me despite me having the password etc. They once helped me turn a warning off years ago and ran through a serious of default codes and I think one of them worked but not sure which one. So the questions are:

1. Is there a list of default engineer codes somewhere that I can try?

2. What is the best way of powering the system down completely without setting it off for extended periods of time. Here are the particulars:

- External bellbox very high and difficult to get to.
- Main box (inside) very accessible, so have no problem taking the battery out and disconnecting power to it.
- But I understand if I do the above it'll set off the external bell box, right? what is the best way of stopping/minimising that aside from climbing up and taking its battery out (not sure how easy it is!).

Your help with this would be greatly appreciated and will go some way towards saving my marriage :-))

Alternatively if you think it's a job best left to an electrician any recommendation for one in south dublin / north wicklow would be great, as well as an idea on what would be a fair price that I should expect to pay for this.


Thanks in advance!

Simple enough job, just take fuse out of fused spur.
Disconnect the battery.
External bell will ring for up to 30 minutes then stop.

Job done.

MuffinsDa

Thanks altor / Koolkid, much appreciated.

@Altor just a quick one: are you certain that the external bell will eventually stop after a while. The system is quite old, and I remember in the old times alarms used to go off for all day until they brought in some regulation to limit the duration. Is there a possibility that this may be one of those ones that doesn't stop, or from your experience with PhoneWatch concord alarms the external boxes are programmed to stop after a certain time (even in the anbsence of signal / timing from the panel)?

altor

MuffinsDa wrote: »

Thanks altor / Koolkid, much appreciated.

@Altor just a quick one: are you certain that the external bell will eventually stop after a while. The system is quite old, and I remember in the old times alarms used to go off for all day until they brought in some regulation to limit the duration. Is there a possibility that this may be one of those ones that doesn't stop, or from your experience with PhoneWatch concord alarms the external boxes are programmed to stop after a certain time (even in the anbsence of signal / timing from the panel)?

Yes, the external bell off the concord has a set timer so will shut off max 30 minutes, if it even lasts that long I'd be amazed.

MuffinsDa

Great, many thanks. Will give it a go next weekend after warning the neighbours and will update here!

KoolKid

Do it during the day & the neighbors won't even notice, trust me.

altor

MuffinsDa wrote: »

Great, many thanks. Will give it a go next weekend after warning the neighbours and will update here!

No problem, if you have any problems doing same please let us know.