Noth­ing will make your heart beat faster than get­ting an alert that your home secu­ri­ty sys­tem has been trig­gered. Thoughts will like­ly race your mind about who could be attempt­ing a break-in and whether catch­ing this intrud­er in time will be pos­si­ble.

When there is a valid threat com­pro­mis­ing the secu­ri­ty of your home, know­ing about it as soon as pos­si­ble is inte­gral so that you can take the appro­pri­ate mea­sures. How­ev­er, the prob­lem is that a secu­ri­ty alert only some­times means there is, in fact, a valid threat present.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, false alarms are rel­a­tive­ly com­mon, espe­cial­ly if your secu­ri­ty sys­tem is old­er, often lead­ing to need­less feel­ings of pan­ic and con­cern. 

A false alarm is trig­gered by acci­dent, alert­ing you to some­thing hap­pen­ing at your home that you did not need to know about. Reg­u­lar, every­day occur­rences often trig­ger false alarms, but when they occur too fre­quent­ly, they may decrease the over­all reli­a­bil­i­ty of your sys­tem.

Main Triggers of False Alarms With Home Security Systems

The type, age, and sen­si­tiv­i­ty lev­el of your home secu­ri­ty alarm sys­tem are all fac­tors that could impact its effec­tive­ness and how often false alarms are trig­gered. While there could be var­i­ous poten­tial trig­gers of false alarms, the first step to pre­vent­ing them is iden­ti­fy­ing them so that you can make adjust­ments as nec­es­sary.

The fol­low­ing are some of the pri­ma­ry false alarm trig­gers that are com­mon for most home secu­ri­ty sys­tems:

  • Pets

If you have installed a secu­ri­ty sys­tem in your home to watch your cat or dog while you are away, receiv­ing alerts trig­gered by your pet’s move­ments may be what you want.

How­ev­er, if this was dif­fer­ent from your intent for such a sys­tem and you have a pet that moves around the house a lot, this can get annoy­ing. Motion detec­tion cam­eras are often trig­gered by the move­ments of pets them­selves or by the move­ment detect­ed when a pet knocks some­thing over. 

One way to reduce the num­ber of false alarms trig­gered by your fur­ry friends is by cre­at­ing a detec­tion zone on your cam­eras. This will allow you to avoid noti­fi­ca­tion trig­gers for cer­tain areas of the screen.

If you adjust your detec­tion zone so your sys­tem is not trig­gered by move­ment on the floor, you can reduce the false alarms caused by pets walk­ing around your home.

  • Open windows

Anoth­er com­mon source of false alarms is the breeze caused by open win­dows in your home. This wind can set off motion sen­sors and alarms, as it can dis­rupt the con­nec­tion between the sen­sors, espe­cial­ly if it is strong.

In addi­tion, when the breeze from the win­dow moves oth­er things, such as cur­tains, flow­ers, or light­weight items, a false alarm will like­ly be trig­gered. Of course, the best way to com­bat such false alarms is to keep your win­dows closed when your sys­tem is armed.

How­ev­er, it is also pos­si­ble to reduce the amount of false alarms from move­ments caused by wind by reduc­ing your device’s motion sen­si­tiv­i­ty, as low­er set­tings will only trig­ger warn­ings from more sub­stan­tial move­ments that are detect­ed.

  • Insects

Bugs can sig­nif­i­cant­ly cause home secu­ri­ty false alarms, which is yet anoth­er rea­son they are con­sid­ered pesky pests. Your false alarm fre­quen­cy will like­ly rise, espe­cial­ly dur­ing the spring and sum­mer, when it is more com­mon for flies to get into the house.

Although most flies, ants, and bee­tles are too small to trig­ger a false alarm from their move­ments as they fly through the air or crawl along sur­faces in your home, if one crawls direct­ly over one of your system’s sen­sors, it can trig­ger a false alarm. 

You can reduce these trig­gers by tak­ing mea­sures to pre­vent such insects from enter­ing your home. For instance, put some mag­net­ic fly mesh or roller fly screen on your doors dur­ing sum­mer.

  • Low battery

Anoth­er rea­son behind false alarms is a low bat­tery. A decreased bat­tery lev­el can impact your device’s over­all per­for­mance and cause weak con­nec­tion to pow­er sources. If your device is not per­form­ing opti­mal­ly for this rea­son, it may not accu­rate­ly detect motion, send­ing you false alarms more fre­quent­ly and fail­ing to detect actu­al threats.

If your device has a fea­ture that alerts you when the bat­tery is run­ning low, pay care­ful atten­tion. Be sure to replace the bat­ter­ies before you have been alert­ed.

Sup­pose you do not get alerts when your bat­tery lev­el is low. In that case, set reminders to check the bat­tery lev­el peri­od­i­cal­ly to ensure you can replace it when nec­es­sary.

  • Sudden shifts in temperature

Cer­tain motion sen­sor secu­ri­ty sys­tems can some­times be sen­si­tive to quick tem­per­a­ture changes, so you may receive an alert when the tem­per­a­ture sud­den­ly ris­es or falls.

To pre­vent false alarms, installing your device in an area with no rapid tem­per­a­ture fluc­tu­a­tions is best. For instance, keep your sen­sors away from radi­a­tors, bath­rooms, win­dows, and areas that receive a lot of direct sun­light.

How Protection Plus Can Help Minimize Home Security System False Alarms

Sup­pose you have tak­en mea­sures to min­i­mize the alerts caused by the above­men­tioned fac­tors and con­tin­ue to expe­ri­ence false alarms. In that case, your cur­rent sys­tem has become too old and needs replac­ing.

Pro­tec­tion Plus can help you find top-notch secu­ri­ty sys­tems that will boost your home’s safe­ty if you are in the mar­ket for new alarm sys­tems in the GTA.

Our state-of-the-art secu­ri­ty solu­tions made by indus­try-lead­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers are sure to be much more reli­able regard­ing motion detec­tion. With few­er false alarms, you can min­i­mize unnec­es­sary annoy­ances and estab­lish sol­id trust in your sys­tem.

If you do not have a phone line, this is not a prob­lem. Pro­tec­tion Plus uti­lizes GSM cel­lu­lar com­mu­ni­ca­tion to over­see your home secu­ri­ty set­up, and our user-friend­ly app will make it much eas­i­er to man­age your sys­tem in real time from wher­ev­er you are. 

Our Visu­al Alarm Ver­i­fi­ca­tion fea­ture is also ben­e­fi­cial, as it pairs alarm sig­nals with video clips of what trig­gered the alarm, so you can quick­ly iden­ti­fy when a false alarm is, in fact, a false alarm. With one of our sys­tems, you can have peace of mind know­ing that you, your fam­i­ly, and your home will be safe­guard­ed 24/7.

For more infor­ma­tion about our alarm sys­tems in the GTA or to learn more about how one of our alarm sys­tems can boost your home’s secu­ri­ty, call Pro­tec­tion Plus Secu­ri­ty Solu­tions at 1–844-365‑7587 or con­tact us here.

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Allan Baum
Allan Baum founded Protection Plus with his wife Neseh in 1994. He has worked in the security industry since 1991. His educational background includes an MBA from York University ( when it was still York) and a B.A. from McGill. Allan and Neseh have three wonderful children who are now considered adults and an equally wonderful dog named Waub.