Around 4AM I woke up absolutely thirsty, so I got up and grabbed a drink, laid in bed drinking it, and my wife had some too as she was thirsty, and is a light sleeper, so she always knows when I get up for anything. Everything was normal, finished the drink, went back to sleep.
A bit before 6AM this morning, our interior motion detector goes off. A bit of background - my wife is a really light sleeper, and only sleeps well if our bedroom door is closed, and if she is the furthest from the door. I'm not a fan of the closed bedroom door - I like to be able to hear if anything is in our house besides us - so we bought the motion detector so I would sleep better with the door shut. We don't have any pets or kids or anything, so the only things that should set off the alarm are me and her.
Also, she wakes up thinking she is hearing stuff inside the house maybe 3-4x per year. This has been going on since she was a kid. Generally she is paralyzed with fear, basically it's a borderline painic attack, so she sits very still listening for a long time, doesn't hear anything, and rationalizes to herself that it was nothing. Then she goes back to sleep.
We don't have a fancy alarm system that covers every point of entry, just a wireless infrared motion detector that makes a really loud chime if anything moves in its coverage area. If you're interested, it's this: http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=93068
We've had it for at least a couple months, never had any false alarms. The coverage area goes from one end of our house to the other - All the way across the living room, entry area, and all the way down the hallway where the bedrooms are. It covers the entire route to our bedroom, which is the thing I'm most concerned about. Insurance covers all the other stuff, but family is not replaceable.
Enough background, back to this morning. Alarm goes off, and kick my foot under the cover to make sure my wife is still in the bed, so she's not the one setting it off. She's there, and wide awake, so I bolt out of bed and grab a handgun and flashlight from the nightstand and cover the closed bedroom door with the gun.
At that point, I'm not sure what to do. If someone were still moving outside the door, it's almost certain they would have set the alarm off again, it keeps chiming as long as something is moving. Plus I can't hear anything except the heat running, and anyone walking down the hallway to our door would make the floor creak considerably.
I ask my wife is she can hear anything, and she says she was already awake BEFORE the alarm went off because she thought she heard something
, but she was too scared to move or wake me up
. (So this is one of the aforementioned, 3-4x per year panics). We talk about what to do for a couple of minutes. The whole time I still have the bedroom door covered with the gun.
Neither of us can hear anything for the next several minutes, so we decide it's either a false alarm (seems pretty unlikely), or whatever sets it off is most likely gone. It's infrared, so the only thing to set it off would have to be heat moving; a blanket falling off the couch to the floor or something like that wouldn't set it off. The only thought I had of heat moving was if the heat had just kicked on and started blowing hot air into a much colder room, perhaps that could have set it off (again, doubtful).
So as far as I can tell, I have 3 choices.
A) Call the police and say my cheap motion detector went off and someone may be in the house. Wait up to 45 minutes for them to get here. But to let them in, I would have to walk outside the bedroom, where the motion was.
B) Lay in bed listening closely, with the door covered with the gun, for the next 90 minutes, when it's time to get up and get ready to go to work. And at that point, get up and make sure there is no one and nothing inside the house.
C) Clear the house. After all, you have to come out eventually, and if there was someone else in the house, they heard that loud chiming just like I did, so they knew I knew they were there. In most cases I would think they would have scooted on out the door rather than wait around to be confronted by a potentially armed homeowner, and at this point they've had a few minutes to get out of my house, which is great, b/c I don't want to find anything except an empty house.
So all 3 options require leaving the room - might as well get it over with.
So my wife is shaking a bit, but not paralyzed with fear or anything. I told her to go into our master bathroom with a flashlight, a 38, and the cell phone. Tell her if anything comes in the bedroom, light it with the light, and if it's not me, if it threatens her / moves towards her in anyway, shoot it. Also tell her I will verbally tell her when I am done clearing, and coming back into the room. Obviously, if you hear anyone yelling, or gunshots, pickup the phone.
I turned off the motion detector, and started clearing room by room. Upstairs at our house is the living area/bedrooms, and downstairs is a walkout basement and the garage.
Clear the whole upstairs, everything is fine. Front door is still deadbolted from the inside. Started down the steps to the basement. At the bottom of the steps is a sliding door that goes to our deck and back yard. The lock is pretty un-reliable, so we just use a bar in the track instead. And that bar is laying on the floor next to the track, not in the track.
The last time we were downstairs or out on the deck was probably Sunday afternoon. I was pretty sure I locked it, but there's always a chance I had a moment of stupidity and failed to lock it. Anyway, at that point I was obviously quite concerned, but all that was left to clear was a an empty 600SF basement, the laundry room, and the garage. Thankfully, I didn't find anyone / anything in the house. So I locked the sliding door back up with the bar, and told my wife the house was clear, and I was coming back into the bedroom.
Stuff I know I should improve on:
1) Purchase a couple more wireless sensors to cover the other doors to our house, not just the front door entry area and the hallway to our bedroom. It's great to know if someone is anywhere near your bedroom, but it's even better to know if something warm-blooded is moving anywhere in the house.
2) Get a dog. We want one, and have for a while, but have been putting it off because we're busy/gone a lot and feel like it would be at home by itself all the time, plus they cost money and I was laid off a couple weeks ago. If we had one this morning, it probably would have barked long before the alarm went off, and it would have been nice to open the bedroom door and let something else go out before me through the house.
3) LOCK the stinking door. Always.
The most rational explanation I have for what happened was that someone came in our un-locked :banghead:
sliding glass door, came upstairs to look around, and when the chimes went off in our bedroom, they went back down the stairs and left out the same way they came in (and closed the sliding door on the way out
)
I'm open to other suggestions of what could have caused it.
So what do you guys see that we should improve on?
Do you think there's any rational explanation for the infra-red alarm going off besides an intruder?
A bit before 6AM this morning, our interior motion detector goes off. A bit of background - my wife is a really light sleeper, and only sleeps well if our bedroom door is closed, and if she is the furthest from the door. I'm not a fan of the closed bedroom door - I like to be able to hear if anything is in our house besides us - so we bought the motion detector so I would sleep better with the door shut. We don't have any pets or kids or anything, so the only things that should set off the alarm are me and her.
Also, she wakes up thinking she is hearing stuff inside the house maybe 3-4x per year. This has been going on since she was a kid. Generally she is paralyzed with fear, basically it's a borderline painic attack, so she sits very still listening for a long time, doesn't hear anything, and rationalizes to herself that it was nothing. Then she goes back to sleep.
We don't have a fancy alarm system that covers every point of entry, just a wireless infrared motion detector that makes a really loud chime if anything moves in its coverage area. If you're interested, it's this: http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=93068
We've had it for at least a couple months, never had any false alarms. The coverage area goes from one end of our house to the other - All the way across the living room, entry area, and all the way down the hallway where the bedrooms are. It covers the entire route to our bedroom, which is the thing I'm most concerned about. Insurance covers all the other stuff, but family is not replaceable.
Enough background, back to this morning. Alarm goes off, and kick my foot under the cover to make sure my wife is still in the bed, so she's not the one setting it off. She's there, and wide awake, so I bolt out of bed and grab a handgun and flashlight from the nightstand and cover the closed bedroom door with the gun.
At that point, I'm not sure what to do. If someone were still moving outside the door, it's almost certain they would have set the alarm off again, it keeps chiming as long as something is moving. Plus I can't hear anything except the heat running, and anyone walking down the hallway to our door would make the floor creak considerably.
I ask my wife is she can hear anything, and she says she was already awake BEFORE the alarm went off because she thought she heard something
, but she was too scared to move or wake me up. (So this is one of the aforementioned, 3-4x per year panics). We talk about what to do for a couple of minutes. The whole time I still have the bedroom door covered with the gun. Neither of us can hear anything for the next several minutes, so we decide it's either a false alarm (seems pretty unlikely), or whatever sets it off is most likely gone. It's infrared, so the only thing to set it off would have to be heat moving; a blanket falling off the couch to the floor or something like that wouldn't set it off. The only thought I had of heat moving was if the heat had just kicked on and started blowing hot air into a much colder room, perhaps that could have set it off (again, doubtful).
So as far as I can tell, I have 3 choices.
A) Call the police and say my cheap motion detector went off and someone may be in the house. Wait up to 45 minutes for them to get here. But to let them in, I would have to walk outside the bedroom, where the motion was.
B) Lay in bed listening closely, with the door covered with the gun, for the next 90 minutes, when it's time to get up and get ready to go to work. And at that point, get up and make sure there is no one and nothing inside the house.
C) Clear the house. After all, you have to come out eventually, and if there was someone else in the house, they heard that loud chiming just like I did, so they knew I knew they were there. In most cases I would think they would have scooted on out the door rather than wait around to be confronted by a potentially armed homeowner, and at this point they've had a few minutes to get out of my house, which is great, b/c I don't want to find anything except an empty house.
So all 3 options require leaving the room - might as well get it over with.
So my wife is shaking a bit, but not paralyzed with fear or anything. I told her to go into our master bathroom with a flashlight, a 38, and the cell phone. Tell her if anything comes in the bedroom, light it with the light, and if it's not me, if it threatens her / moves towards her in anyway, shoot it. Also tell her I will verbally tell her when I am done clearing, and coming back into the room. Obviously, if you hear anyone yelling, or gunshots, pickup the phone.
I turned off the motion detector, and started clearing room by room. Upstairs at our house is the living area/bedrooms, and downstairs is a walkout basement and the garage.
Clear the whole upstairs, everything is fine. Front door is still deadbolted from the inside. Started down the steps to the basement. At the bottom of the steps is a sliding door that goes to our deck and back yard. The lock is pretty un-reliable, so we just use a bar in the track instead. And that bar is laying on the floor next to the track, not in the track.
The last time we were downstairs or out on the deck was probably Sunday afternoon. I was pretty sure I locked it, but there's always a chance I had a moment of stupidity and failed to lock it. Anyway, at that point I was obviously quite concerned, but all that was left to clear was a an empty 600SF basement, the laundry room, and the garage. Thankfully, I didn't find anyone / anything in the house. So I locked the sliding door back up with the bar, and told my wife the house was clear, and I was coming back into the bedroom.
Stuff I know I should improve on:
1) Purchase a couple more wireless sensors to cover the other doors to our house, not just the front door entry area and the hallway to our bedroom. It's great to know if someone is anywhere near your bedroom, but it's even better to know if something warm-blooded is moving anywhere in the house.
2) Get a dog. We want one, and have for a while, but have been putting it off because we're busy/gone a lot and feel like it would be at home by itself all the time, plus they cost money and I was laid off a couple weeks ago. If we had one this morning, it probably would have barked long before the alarm went off, and it would have been nice to open the bedroom door and let something else go out before me through the house.
3) LOCK the stinking door. Always.
The most rational explanation I have for what happened was that someone came in our un-locked :banghead:
sliding glass door, came upstairs to look around, and when the chimes went off in our bedroom, they went back down the stairs and left out the same way they came in (and closed the sliding door on the way out)I'm open to other suggestions of what could have caused it.
So what do you guys see that we should improve on?
Do you think there's any rational explanation for the infra-red alarm going off besides an intruder?
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