Buying second hand home with Eircom Alarm

Hi, we've put in an offer on a house but is has an Eircom Phonewatch Alarm, does anyone know would it work out costly to move to a 'normal' alarm crowd or can you keep the Eircom Alarm but without the monitoring part of it, hate the thoughts of having to pay them a monthly fee.

Thanks.

You can use the Eircom Phonewatch as a normal alarm, all you have to do is cancel the monitoring or more likely the people you are buying the house from will have to.

Might be worth checking whether the system has an external siren as a lot of the Phonewatch systems just have an internal siren and the monitoring station then contact keyholders and garda. Personally I like this arrangement as I'm fairly certain any criminals could clean out our house before any neighbours took any notice of an alarm going off! If there is no external siren I think Eircom Phonewatch will fit one for you.

In short, the monitoring is optional.

Yes, the monitoring is optional. We have a Phonewatch alarm and, acording to the local Gardai, it's a definite deterrent.

We live about 4 mins drive from the local Garda Station and they say it's too much of a risk for the burglars to take.

We also have neighbours who have conventional alarms and, askalot says, no one takes a blind bit of notice when they go off.

However, one of my neighbours has a Phonewatch box outside her house although it is not monitored - the burglars don't know that so perhaps it's just the box that's the deterrent and not the fact that it's monitored.

Many thanks, good to know at least there's the option to go unmonitored.

A word of caution ... if your alarm is not monitored, Eircom charge you a premium to come out and change batteries in sensors/control panel etc.

... our battery in the control panel went a few years ago ... even though it is wired to the mains, it uses the battery for back up ... bloody thing kept beeping telling us the battery needed replacing ... as we had stopped the monitoring service, eircom wanted 85 euro to come out to change the battery + cost of battery. Needless to say Mr. HP sourced the battery online and did it himself ... but I just though you should be aware of the additional charge.

Is Phonewatch the one that used to be advertised as suitable for taking with you when you moved house or am I thinking of something else? If so would the seller intend taking it with them?