External Sounder Problem?

Hi,

My external sounder on my alarm sounded a couple of times recently for about 5 seconds only and the tamper light illuminated. The other night it rang, I went to enter the code but the control panel had no power (we were not in a power cut). After about 3 minutes the control panel came back to life and I was able to silence it. A call to the Engineer told me to isolate mains power and leave it to run until batteries ran flat (an option i did not take at 3:30 am as I have neighbours!). I have isolated mains and removed batteries from main box and external sounder to silence it for now.

Alarm company want to fit a new external sounder and service (approx £300!). They say a flat battery in the sounder would not isolate the keypad (the battery in the main box is <1 year old), I am not convinced, expecially as anew battery is £7!!!

Anyone ever heard of this or offer an advice? Any help greatly appreciated,

Thanks

you could, if you think you are able to, change the external siren yourself.

how old is the system?
and what is it?
how old is the external siren unit ?
if it is under a year old, call the installer and get them to fix it, consumers statutory rights come in to this.

if you are under a contract, you are stuck with them (check you contract wording)

if you are not under contract, change the siren unit yourself.

but thinking on it,
if your system crashed for a bout 3 mins, and the siren sounded for a min or so, i have the sneaking suspician that the battery in the box could be failing, but that is just a guess, it could be a number of things, PCB failure (yep it happens) or other things

Doesn't sound like a sounder fault to me. You need to check the voltage into the main battery. My guess is that the voltage regulator has gone and you are cooking the battery.