Best way to secure an attached garage

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1

Hi all,

This is my first post - I will be purchasing my first Alarm.com system within the next couple weeks. We just purchased the house, and I am not sure of the best way to secure the garage. The garage has a sectional overhead door with opener that I am not too worried about. But, there is a side window and door that leads to the side/back of the house and then the garage leads into the house via another door. The alarm panel will probably be mounted in the vicinity of that interior garage door inside the house - it will put it a decent distance and out of view from the front door, but my concern is giving the panel enough time to activate crash and smash if someone were to gain entry via the garage.

So, my question is, do I put sensors on the side door and window in the garage and not on the interior door? I guess that would give the most time from someone breaking in via one of those 2 entry points before they get to the alarm panel but there would be no alarm (if they did break in via the overhead garage door) before they could potentially disable the panel. I am fairly sure someone trying to break into the house will not go through the garage door, but not positive!

Or do I only put a door sensor on the interior door? My concern about only putting a sensor on the interior door is that it would leave very little time for Crash and Smash to activate, plus it would give the crook ample time in the garage before setting off the alarm.

Anyone have thoughts on this? I have drawn a quick diagram to help illustrate. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!

-David

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2

From what it sounds like, I would put a sensor on both the garage exterior door as well as the interior door in case they were able to still break in by some other means (the overhead door for instance). I would program the exterior door as perimeter sensor to set off the alarm immediately, unless you are going to be using that door regularly to enter the house. The interior door should be programmed as entry/exit to give you time to deactivate the alarm when you come in normally.

As far as crash and smash goes, it begins working immediately when a sensor is tripped.

Say they were able to break into the garage and get in through the interior door. As soon as that sensor is tripped, a signal is sent to Alarm.com saying that a sensor tripped and to either wait for a disarm command to come through or an alarm signal. If neither is received, it is treated as a crash and smash event.

So really, if you’re only concerned about protecting the house itself, and not the items in the garage, you only need a sensor on the interior door. Though for redundancy sake, I would still suggest putting one on the exterior door.

3

Thank you, Jay. That is a huge help!

Would you recommend putting one on the window in the garage as well?

And on the topic of windows, do you recommend putting sensors on all main floor windows? If so, do you recommend the dual zone (magnetic and shock) sensors?

Thanks!!

4

Yeah, if you’re putting one on the door, putting a sensor on the window makes sense as well.