Honeywell 5811: Installing on a Double French Door

Hi DIYers, Sterling from Alarm Grid here and today we're going to show you how to mount a 5811 Wireless Door and Window Sensor. We have our door and window sensor programmed into our L5100 LYNX Touch Wireless Security System. We've already done that process and we have a video that shows you how to do that programming, so go check that one out.

We have also already installed the battery, and that way the sensor is live. You can hear the panel beep, and announce front door when the magnet comes away from the sensor. That's the way the sensor works. Check out our video on how to replace a 5811 battery, if you want to see how to install the battery. So this sensor works.

There's a contact, which is the bigger device, and there is a smaller magnet. You would normally want to put the magnet on the actual moving door and the contact on the frame. That way when you close the door and let's say you're mad and you slam it, it's not going to rattle the sensitive circuitry inside the contact.

When the door opens, the magnet moves with the door, and the panel beeps and chimes to say, front door. When the magnet is in line with the two plastic tabs on the side of the contact, then the sensor is happy, the zone is ready, and you can arm your system. You'll notice that these tabs are only along one long edge of the 5811, so be very careful to mount the magnet on that side.

Here we have two French doors, double doors. This is our front door and with these French doors, the left side opens. The right side can only open if you first open the left side. Therefore, we don't need to put a sensor on both sides. We're only going to put the sensor on the left side, and that will protect the door from any break in.

Before mounting the sensor, you always want to verify that your position will be good. Every door has a slightly different frame. On this one, you can see that there's a little lip, and a slight gap between the door and the frame, so before again mounting, we want to make sure that when the door is closed, the system is happy.

So we're going to hold the contact up against the frame where we want to mount it. We're going to hold the magnet against the door, and then we're going to have a friend help us, and open the door, and we're going to verify that this panel beeps. When we close the door back up, the panel goes back to ready to arm, so we know that our intended mounting location is going to be good.

Now that we know exactly where we're putting it, we've already cleaned off those two locations. We suggest using alcohol wipes or some type of cleaner, and making sure that the intended location is also very dry before mounting, because what we're going to do is use the double-sided tape that's on the back of the sensor, to make a nice easy installation.

The double-sided tape comes already installed, on both the magnet and the contact, so we're first going to do the contact. We simply peel off the tape. Now this contact happens to have the sensor serial number, which is used to enroll the sensor. There's a nice sticker there, so during your installation you may want to hold on to this. Probably want to write down front door, so you know that this is the one for the front door.

We'll set that aside and we will mount our door contact. So again, we know where we want to go, being very careful to make sure that these two tabs, which show where the magnet should go are going to be facing the door, and we press tightly up against the frame. Our contact is installed.

Now we take our magnet, peel off the tape and we're going to press, and fit the magnet against the door, to line up with the magnet tabs. When the door is shut, the system is happy, ready to arm. When we open the door, the panel beeps and says, front door.

Close it up and the panel is ready to arm. Our installation of our 5811 Wireless Door and Window Sensor is now complete. If you have any questions on how to install a 5811, please let us know. You can email us at support@alarmgrade.com, or feel free to call in.