What intruder alarm grades mean
Video transcript:
Hello, my name is Buzz Coates Norbain’s Security Solutions Specialist
and today I'm here to talk about grading systems on the alarm panels.
The alarm industry is strongly led by insurance companies
and heavily regimented to gain a police response.
These bodies in turn spend a lot of time inspecting intruder alarm systems.
And after the insurance company has understood the likely threat,
they will insist on a certain grade of system to be installed.
The grading system in its basic format basically comes as Grade 1, 2, 3 and 4.
If you'd like further more detailed information regarding the grades,
well, you need to go to the BSI website and download EN50131 or PD6662.
The grading system will be determined very much about the level of risk,
the contents that are involved in the place
and basically also the historics of the area as well.
It may well be crime is quite common in that area.
And in addition to that, we also take into account the level of opportunity
that might exist to a certain individual likely to break in.
So with the grading system, Grade 1 is seen as low risk.
Grade 2 - low to medium risk.
Grade 3 - medium to high risk.
And Grade 4 - high risk.
The grading system number determine things like event logs,
the size of the event logs, backup standby time.
So in an ordinary sort of system, we may be looking at 12 hours,
but on the higher risk systems it could be up to 48 to 72 hours.
In addition to this, it will also affect access levels,
the time of response from the police or guarding system, etc, etc.
So Grade 1 systems, we typically see being used in residential areas
where we typically have just bells and whistles
when the alarm system goes off.
You cannot have police response on a Grade 1 system.
Grade 1 systems will typically be wireless, but they can be wired as well.
So moving up to Grade 2 systems,
we typically see those in the higher residential
and they're moving into commercial premises.
And here we will see that you can use wireless and wire systems
and typically here you do get a police response.
Also in that, we do start to see the incorporation of dual
and doubleline resistors to ensure that we can determine
between tampers and alarms, etc.
So at Grade 3, currently, there are no wireless controllers allowed to be used.
and from the point of view of alarm receiving centres,
that will definitely be on the cards.
Currently in the UK and EU there are no Grade 4 panels in existence.
So there are Grade 4 detectors, but sadly at the moment,
you cannot a Grade 4 full system.
So just a few important bits to end up with.
If you are using a Grade 3 panel, you must use Grade 3 detectors.
If you inadvertently install a Grade 2 detector,
but then it gets dumbed down to a Grade 2 totally,
even though you've only used one detector.
Most installs that we do see at the professional arena is basically 2 and 3.
A little trend we are seeing of late is that a lot of people now are turning to
self monitoring on Grade 2 systems, whereby they're actually using apps
to monitor whether they've had an alarm.
So if you'd like to find out more.
or even better, give us a shout.