Security System Recommendation - Evaporative Cooling

We have evaporative cooling in our home in New Mexico. Evaporative cooling, unlike refrigerated cooling, requires that windows open a few inches in the rooms you want to be cooled.

We have window sensors but they are overridden when we arm the system at night in the “armed stay” mode. They have “sticks” cut to size to make opening the windows from the outside more difficult. Still we feel less safe than we’d like to.

Is there a way to detect entry attempts when we have to leave the window open like this? Would lining up the sensors we have for the “open” condition work? Meaning each window would have two sets of sensors I think.

I hope there is a more elegant solution than sticks and extra sensors though. Any ideas?

Thanks,
-Ray

You would need to have the sensors closed when the window is in its rest position. If that is 3 inches open, then simply add another magnet at that position. That way you have a magnet which closes the sensor in the true closed position, and a magnet which closes the sensor in the 3 inches open position.

Thanks Jason! So if I am reading the article correctly, I’d want to mount the additional magnets in a reversed polarity orientation from the original magnet?

The magnets show out of stock in Surety products catalog online. Any idea when they will be back in stock?

I don’t have an ETA on stock availability for that model at this time unfortunately, our distributor has been out of stock for a little while, however the magnets are not unique, any similar surface mounted sensor magnet will work. You can find them from a variety of vendors online.

Yes, if you want to mount the magnets close to one another then reverse the polarity.