Hey DIY-ers, I'm Jorge from Alarm Grid.
Today, we're going to be going over how to test your alarm
system through Alarm Grid.
Now, when I'm referring to testing
I'm referring to the actual setting off an alarm
and making sure that the alarm signals are actually
being sent over, and that the central station--
the central monitoring station is receiving them.
So a lot of people think in order to do this,
you need a professional installer
to go out to the house, that is actually not true.
You can actually in testing systems on your own,
we encourage our users to test the systems
on their own first of all, not only is he
going to give you a better understanding of your system.
It's also going to make sure that in the future
you know how to do the testing on your own.
You can go through the programming
if anything needs to be changed.
You can call us and work with us, especially
if you're monitoring, you just call
us, call into the tech department,
let us know that you may need help testing some sensors,
will be more than happy to help you out.
But if you're looking at doing this on your own,
all you have to do to test your alarm system to make sure
that the signals are being sent to the central station
is first call our phone number on the website.
Our general number is 888-818-7728.
Listen to the menu options, and you
should see one-- you should have one option.
We'll actually forward you over to the central monitoring
station which is Criticom, well CMS.
So after you get patched through CMS,
they're going to need your name, your address,
and your false alarm password.
After you've given them all this information,
you just need to let them know that you want
to place your account on test.
You can choose how long you want to place it on test for,
an hour, 30 minutes, a whole day, a whole week,
it's up to you to decide how long you want to place
your account on test for.
But do realize, placing your account
on tests with the central station
means that any signals received from your alarm system
they will not dispatch.
What this means for you as you can freely
go around the house, set off alarms
while your system is on test mode at the central station.
And you don't have to worry about any police fire, fire
department, medical department being dispatched out
to the house or to your location.
Now, one very important thing, when
you're calling the central station
make sure that you give them the false alarm password and not
your duress, a lot of people confuse these two.
The false alarm password is the password
that you give the central station to let them know--
one, it might have been a false alarm and to verify they
are actually one of the alarm users.
If you give them the duress, the first thing
they're going to want to do is call the police
because they think you're in the duress situation
even though you are the one that called.
So if you give them the duress they're
automatically going to dispatch the authorities out
to your house.
If you give the false alarm password,
they're going to go ahead and know
that you're a verified user and then
you're just placing the account on test.
Now, when you're testing your system.
If you have burge, environmental, life-safety
devices.
So by burge, I'm talking about motions doors, windows,
and glass breaks, motions, doors, windows, glass
breaks, shock sensors even.
If you're testing burge sensors make sure
that they receive a burge signal.
Make sure that you only need to test--
if you want to test every single sensor you certainly can.
but whenever you're doing this for a certificate--
for the certificate of alarm for insurance purposes,
you only need to test one of each kind.
So one burge, one life safety, so if you're doing fire and CO,
you should test one of each.
So if you have a smoke detector, heat detector, or a CO,
test one of each.
And then if you have environmental sensors
like flood sensors you want to make
sure you test those as well, if you're
looking to get flood protection checked off
on the certificate of alarm.
After you test one of each sensor
with a monitoring station and your account is still on test
and you wanted to go back live.
You can always call back, tell them to put your account live
again, to take it off of test, or you can just
wait until the time limit you gave them runs out.
But basically, once you do that, once you do test the alarm
system, and you're doing this for the certificate of alarm
on our page, all you have to do is send us an email,
let us know that you've tested the sensors,
and that you're doing it for a certificate of alarm.
We'll go in will check off what you've tested
and then you can download the certificate of alarm right
from our website, www.alarmgrid.com.
You just have to log in to your profile and you actually
see a button that it will say--
you can actually email the certificate of alarm
directly to your insurance agent or you can email it
to yourself, and then you can send it
to them, whichever one works best for you guys.
And keep in mind, if you are doing this for the certificate
alarm, for the homeowners insurance discount,
you usually have to get it done once a year.
So after your year passes, you may
need to get another certificate of alarm,
and the testing it's always best to try to test the alarm
system at least once a month, just to make sure everything
is still working correctly.
So testing one of each sensor once a month is definitely
recommended, not only is it going to get
you guys familiar with the system.
You'll know what to do with the central station,
you'll feel more comfortable calling in or even working
with us.
If you have any questions at all about how else
to test the alarm system, your false alarm passwords,
your account information or anything like that,
feel free to email us at support@alarmgridcom.
If you found the video helpful, make
sure you hit Like on underneath, subscribe to the YouTube
channel, and enable notifications,
so whenever we upload new content you guys get notified.
I'm Jorge, and I'll see you guys next time.