I recently installed Vera 2 in my vacation home. It is somewhat remote on a lake and now my insurance company is insisting on me installing a fire and burglar alarm tied to a central monitoring company or they will not continue to insure my home. I do have some zwave motion detectors and door sensors connected to Vera but nothing that would monitor the smokes or connect it to a monitoring company. Can this be done using Vera?
I am not aware of vera being able to monitor smoke detectors. You can incorporate an elk system with vera. Are you dead set on using the insurance company? If the insurance company insisted that I have to have something e.g. security system, then they better offer a good price break. But that statement from them would put me on the phone with other insurance companies to get quotes and cancel their service.
- Garrett
Even though there does seem to be some European Zwave smoke detectors available, I’ve not seen them in the US as of yet!
If you interfaced a burglar alarm with Vera, then its smoke detectors/sensors can be used to send an alert via text etc if something is triggered… unfortunately the only use this will be will for your peace of mind, as most Insurance companies only accept UL listed monitoring solutions!
The cost of the monitoring is normally offset (as low as $8.95) by the discount you receive from the insurance company, which will be anything from 10 to 20%… or in your case maybe nothing if they are insistent! If you do this, then I would try and insist on a further discount!