Hot take: hardwired beats wireless for reliability but customers hate the cost difference

I used to push wireless on every residential job because it's faster to install and customers love the clean look. Then a guy named Rick from an old security company tore into me at a job site last year. He said I was trading long term reliability for short term convenience and pointed to three of his jobs from 10 years ago that still had zero false alarms. I blew him off at first but after replacing two wireless sensors in six months on my own installs I switched back to hardwired for new builds. The labor is brutal but the failure rate is way lower. What's your experience with false alarms on wireless vs hardwired?

2 comments

2 Comments

faithb781mo ago

My buddy Mike switched his whole house to wireless last year and then spent three months chasing a false alarm that kept going off at 3 AM. Turned out it was the motion sensor picking up his cat walking across the living room floor, the sensitivity was just too high. He finally ripped it all out and went back to hardwired, said the labor was a pain but at least he could sleep through the night. Hardwired is just way more stable in my opinion, especially for stuff like door sensors that don't have to worry about batteries dying either. Not saying wireless is garbage but it definitely has its limits when you need rock solid reliability.

emery9651mo ago

Wait, did your buddy try adjusting the sensitivity before ripping it all out?