Two houses off of one M1G?

[dscline]

I have a rental house next door, and the time has come for my parents to move in there. They won't have a land line, and I would like to take advantage of my existing M1G if practical to provide some basic protection for them. Could that be as simple as running some cat5 over there and a data bus hub? Obviously there's only one siren output. What other issues would I need to consider?

Thanks!

 

[apostolakisl]

Absolutely! The "areas" were put in there precisely for this purpose. You could put an entire condo building on one system that way (depending on just how big it is). My office alarm system is shared by about a dozen suites. Each suite behaves like an independant alarm as far as the users can tell.

Your main limitation is the number of feet of wire. Remember that when you use the data bus hub, every run counts double. If you daisy chain things together instead of using the hub then you just add the total length together.

You could put a second siren on the system also if you wanted. I believe there is only one built in siren driver, but you can buy those as add ons and hook to one of the other outputs. It probably isn't necessary though.

 

[sjbauer]

From the sounds of it these are two separate houses right? If that assumption is correct, no matter what solution you use you will have to be very careful about creating ground loops between the two houses since the electrical ground for each of the houses are different.

 

[WayneW]

The voice announce is another concern... When one area/house arms/disarms/etc, the other house/area would hear it, assuming they share the voice output. Otherwise, one house gets a voice and one doesn't get any voice?

 

[Digger]

I would be worried about transients on the 4 wire buss etc if it is run between houses.

Possibly use a EZ8 panel in the second house?

 

[apostolakisl]

Guys, this is the entire reason they have "areas" on the Elk. Lots of people have done this with a free standing workshop, guest house, pool house, garage, etc. This is basically a guest house provided the distance is reasonable.

The ground goes back to the main Elk panel. Nothing is powered locally. You put a single databus hub in and to that you can add up to 8 other items including the 16 zone expander boards and your keypads.

I am not sure about voice in the other buidling. I would just skip it. I have always felt like the voice is a bit of a gimmicky thing anyway. I would just use a siren which you can hook up as common to both buildings or you could use a separate output and use rules to sound that siren on alarms in area 2. If your parents are moving in because of diminishing capacities, I would think you would want any alarms to sound in both houses.

 

[JonW]

Maybe time for some wireless as well. If they aren't going to have a phone, maybe some wireless pendants (does Elk have those?) for the "I've fallen and I can't get up" situations.

 

[apostolakisl]

Maybe time for some wireless as well. If they aren't going to have a phone, maybe some wireless pendants (does Elk have those?) for the "I've fallen and I can't get up" situations.

You can definitely put a keyfob and a micrphone on an Elk. I don't know if they have ones dedicated to the "I'va fallen and I can't get up" thing. I use keyfobs to arm/disarm and control garage doors via Elk. I could just as easy program those buttons to send for an ambulance or ring my cell phone.

 

[Steveo3308]

The voice announce is another concern... When one area/house arms/disarms/etc, the other house/area would hear it, assuming they share the voice output. Otherwise, one house gets a voice and one doesn't get any voice?

There is a way to split the one voice output to two areas. Works very well.

 

[Digger]

Guys, this is the entire reason they have "areas" on the Elk. Lots of people have done this with a free standing workshop, guest house, pool house, garage, etc. This is basically a guest house provided the distance is reasonable.

Are you sure about this? UL defines that the areas must be in the same structure, same owner, etc. In this case it is not the same structure. There is a legitimate concern that transients can damage the system. The longer the wire outside of the structure the greater the risk of damage from transients.

I believe I remember some threads where people had workshops, pump houses, etc and their was a problem with transients and I will try and locate them.


Lightning on Databus thread

 

[apostolakisl]

I have a workshop that is about 20 feet separate building from my home. It is on my alarm system, not a separate area, but that could be changed in 20 seconds by changing the settings. The separate area thing is only a designation on the Elk programming, no physical difference in wiring.

My office complex is on one system that is 5 separate buildings. This is, as you might imagine, a profesionally installed, insured, bonded, and whatnot company that did that. It isn't an elk system but it is the same area designation concept.

Owning two adjacent lots in most places gives you rights to cross the property line with structures and communication lines. You would have to check local codes and deed restrictions.

Running underground lines puts you at some risk of suffering a lightening issue. But this is no different than your telephone line, cable line, sprinkler line, etc.

Finally, if you set it up and find it doesn't work for you, just buy a unit for the other structure and plug your databus hub into it. There are vitually no wiring changes at all. The only waste is the cat5 you buried. I would suggest putting it in sealed conduit.

 

[WayneW]

The voice announce is another concern... When one area/house arms/disarms/etc, the other house/area would hear it, assuming they share the voice output. Otherwise, one house gets a voice and one doesn't get any voice?

There is a way to split the one voice output to two areas. Works very well.

Please elaborate or link.
I hope you aren't talking about using a bunch of rules and relays to kludge something?
IIRC, the last person to ask about this a few years ago decided it wasn't feasible to use voice in multiple areas.

 

[Steve]

Running underground lines puts you at some risk of suffering a lightening issue. But this is no different than your telephone line, cable line, sprinkler line, etc

Finally, if you set it up and find it doesn't work for you, just buy a unit for the other structure and plug your databus hub into it. There are vitually no wiring changes at all. The only waste is the cat5 you buried. I would suggest putting it in sealed conduit.

What might be really cool to mitigate the concerns of lightning or other transients is a wireless databus hub. I'm sure there are many of its own issues with that but if you had some sort of wireless bridge between the building then there are no transient/safety concerns.

 

[Digger]

I have a workshop that is about 20 feet separate building from my home. It is on my alarm system, not a separate area, but that could be changed in 20 seconds by changing the settings. The separate area thing is only a designation on the Elk programming, no physical difference in wiring.

My office complex is on one system that is 5 separate buildings. This is, as you might imagine, a profesionally installed, insured, bonded, and whatnot company that did that. It isn't an elk system but it is the same area designation concept.

Owning two adjacent lots in most places gives you rights to cross the property line with structures and communication lines. You would have to check local codes and deed restrictions.

Running underground lines puts you at some risk of suffering a lightening issue. But this is no different than your telephone line, cable line, sprinkler line, etc.

Finally, if you set it up and find it doesn't work for you, just buy a unit for the other structure and plug your databus hub into it. There are vitually no wiring changes at all. The only waste is the cat5 you buried. I would suggest putting it in sealed conduit.

I dont think you understand the vulnerability of the system to transients damaging the hardware. It may be a year or more before a lightning strike in the area (not necessarily on the property etc) that could take out the entire system. Are there ways to do it? Yes but it complicates things a lot where it might be easier and cheaper to have two independant systems. Can they be independant yet still provide some level of status between the two and notify each other of an emergency? Sure it can. If I remember correctly Anthony Z did that last year with his neighbor using RF (I had even sugested a method of confirmation etc).

Your office complex may be internonnected, however, I would assume that it not a $500 alarm system but one costing many thousands of dollars designed for such an enviroment. I am sure there is a means to isoloate the buildings etc within the hardware of the system. It may not even be a hardwire interconnetion but a fiber connection etc.

Telco and cable lines are designed to be protected and they are different then the data buss of an alarm system. The telco circuits on alarm panels go through much more stringent safety testing (UL60950) then the 4 wire buss because of the potential of High Voltage lines crossing the telco circuit or lightning. The telco circuits on alarm panels are designed to safely take a minimum 600 V hit (for minutes not miliseconds) in addition to higher potential transients. I am not familiar with safety testing of the cable system so I can not comment on that.

As far as sprinklers are concerned they are switched on and off by relays/dry contacts that provide some level of isolation. In addition many (I am sure not all) sprinkler lines are much shorter than the connection of two homes. Mine only exit the house for about 3 feet (again they are isolated by the relays and 3 feet is not a significant "antenna" for transients).

Can two homes be interconnected to one alarm system and function? Absolutely yes. Is there an inherent risk involved? Absolutely yes. Is it a safety hazard? Most likely not but there is that potential as well.

The OP needs to be aware that there is the possiblity of damage to his system and anything connected to it. Just saying yes it will work is not informing the OP of the possiblity of damage to the system and possibly the homes.

 

[dscline]

Thanks for all the input! Though I don't really understand the concern of ground loops and transients. If nothing is electrically connected between my Elk system and the power wiring of the other house, how does the fact that those components aren't within the same outside walls make any difference? I have a detached garage with underground conduit with wiring for intended expansion of my Elk system. The house next door is actually closer than my garage in the back yard (houses are less than 20' apart). Is the suggestion here that even a detached garage shouldn't be hardwired to the house alarm?!?

As far as the voice announce, my intent was to simply "turn off" voice announcements for the zones over there (but can you disable arm/disarm messages for one area?). Though I'd be interested in hearing about any voice zoning solutions. I agree that a relay/rule kludge probably isn't worth it.

I'm not (yet) concerned with "life alert" type solutions. They aren't that old. This has more to do with the economic events of the past few years than health.

I'm intrigued by the mention of utilizing a wireless bridge. Does this suggest that the Elk communication can somehow be merged into my LAN?

Thanks again for all the input!