Decommission a Honeywell Galaxy 2-12 alarm?

[Bulldoze]

We bought our current house 3 years ago and it came with the Galaxy 2-12 alarm system with 2 remote sounders and also hooked up to our Telephone socket.

I have never used the alarm and have no intention of doing so. Occasionally the alarm goes off by itself and the sound is ear splitting. It has also done so on a number of occasions when we have been out of the house so our poor neighbours got the full brunt of the noise for who knows how long.

I don't want the alarm so just want to power it down but I don't know how to do this - switching off the circuit breaker to the panel just puts it into some kind of tamper mode and the keypad asks for the user code.

How do i power it all off? do I really have to call someone out or will opening the panel and disconnecting the battery suffice? Thanks

 

[omega015]

Turning off the circuit breaker, opening the panel and disconnecting the battery will be enough to decommission the panel. However if you have external sirens, these will have their own battery which will cause them to continue to go off until either a set period (20-30min) or until those batteries deplete. If you can safely get up a ladder to disconnect the battery that would be advisable (assuming you are able and confident with this), wear some earplugs

Keep the sirens on the wall at least as some form of deterrent. Assuming you have no contract/monitoring in place? if not then disconnect from the phone line too as there is no point that being connected.

 

[Bulldoze]

Thanks. I was hoping that there was no batteries inside the sirens - this makes things a bit more awkward. there are 2 obvious sirens connected to the panel - one I can see how to open it but the other one is mounted right on top of the panel and I cannot see how to open it. there also 2 boxes at the front of the house, one yellow ADT box and a Micromart box, I have no idea what these do and if these are also sirens.

 

[omega015]

Those two outside ones are the ones most likely with batteries, the 2 other internal ones are unlikely to have batteries and are probably powered from the panel directly (1 is probably just a speaker too). Can you post some pictures of the internal ones? That way we can tell you if they are likely to have their own power source.

 

[Bulldoze]

Its ok the system sounds a bit too complicated to deal with - the outside ones are beyond my reach anyway. I guess we will just have to put up with the hassle.

One of the reasons to decommission the system was to save on electricity - are these systems expensive in this regard? they must take some current as there are quite a few components feeding into this box and presumably all on 24/7 - and all totally useless.

Thanks again.

 

[omega015]

In normal use the panel consumes at max 200mA, so a quick estimate puts the yearly cost probably somewhere around £40-60 (estimate as I have no idea what you pay or the actual consumption). That assumes your panel is consuming the 200mA which it probably isn't so expect that cost to be a little bit less. However if you could put up with the external alarms going off for a bit while the batteries run out or they automatically switch off then there's nothing stopping you from still powering down the panel.

 

[Bulldoze]

Thanks for the continuing advice, it is much appreciated.

I bit the bullet and opened the small siren in the kitchen and it did have a battery which I disconnected. I then turned off power to the main controller box and disconnected one of the leads to the battery. This seems to have cut power to the box and the keypad and no more warning beeps have been emitted.

Hopefully this has killed everything now. it has been 10 mins and no alarms so hopefully i am good!

Thanks again.

 

[omega015]

That's good news by the sounds of it. I wonder if the external sired are either dummy, weren't part of this installation or their batteries failed a long time ago. Either way fingers crossed its all decommissioned.

 

[Nintendofan]

In normal use the panel consumes at max 200mA, so a quick estimate puts the yearly cost probably somewhere around £40-60 (estimate as I have no idea what you pay or the actual consumption). That assumes your panel is consuming the 200mA which it probably isn't so expect that cost to be a little bit less. However if you could put up with the external alarms going off for a bit while the batteries run out or they automatically switch off then there's nothing stopping you from still powering down the panel.

Think you've got your sums wrong there, my Texecom system hovers around 400mA at 13.7V according to the App, this converts to 5.5 watts per hour that equates to around £7 a year.

 

[omega015]

Mine was based on the installation manual saying 200mA with no other mention of voltage except 230v in this section. However they could of meant 200mA @ 12v?

Equipment Electrical Rating

The control equipment is designed to operate on a mains supply of 230 Volts a.c. (230 V +10% -15%) at a frequency of 50 Hz. It is not suitable for other types of supply. The maximum current consumption in normal use is 200 mA.

 

[Nintendofan]

Mine was based on the installation manual saying 200mA with no other mention of voltage except 230v in this section. However they could of meant 200mA @ 12v?

Now you mention it I'm not so sure now, working out my system at 230v would be 92 watts, that seems quite high for a modern system in a 3 bed property and would cost approx. £130 a year

 

[Deryck Tintagel]

Assuming 200mA DC, then input current is in the order of 20mA. Next to nothing for saving electricity