Lyric SIXCT: Installation on a Sliding Door

Hi, DIYers. Sterling, with Alarm Grid here, and today were going to show you how to install a Honeywell SIXCT wireless door and window sensor on our back sliding door. This SIXCT is one of the new SIX series sensors that works with the Honeywell Lyric all-in-one wireless security system. We have a video on how to program a SIXCT to your Honeywell Lyric, and we've already programmed this sensor as the back sliding door. We have the panel in range audible, so we're going to hear this and I'm going to simulate the door opening so you can hear that the sensor has been programmed. So you hear the chime, "beep, beep," and you hear the back sliding door and then you also heard our siren chime as well. And we know we have a working sensor. The magnet, when pulls away, chimes and as soon as it goes back, it to goes to "Ready To Arm."

So, we have our sensor and our magnet. We have double-sided sticky tape that comes with the unit, and this tape is broken into two portions: a skinny, little piece for the magnet and a bigger, square portion for the sensor. So this is included with the sensor and can be used if you don't want to install with the screws. Of course, it also comes with two screws for the magnet and four mounting screws for the sensor. So, in this case, our back sliding door has a metal frame on the door and...I'm sorry, a metal edge on the door and a metal frame on the side here.

We really don't want to try to drill into that just because the homeowner wasn't sure they wanted to ever deal with patching holes in the metal frame here. So we're going to use the tape in this case. And as long as we clean the area and make it as dry as possible to mount it, it should stick, and it should stick reliably. Of course, over many years if you use the tape, it's more likely that the sensor could potentially fall and that could cause a false alarm. So whenever possible, we do recommend that you use the screws to mount it. But for cases like this, a nice, flat, smooth surface like that, if we clean it and dry it, it should stick really well and hold up for years.

So we have some multipurpose spray and a paper towel. And we're just going to spray our towel, and we're going to clean this surface where we're going to mount the sensor and the magnet. We don't want any dust or any particles that could keep that tape from sticking well. You can see how dirty this surface was. So Windex, alcohol wipes, we're using just some multipurpose spray but we just want to wipe that down as good as we can. And again, even more important than being clean is being dry. So now, we have a new paper towel, completely dry, that we're going to give another good wipe-down. And now we should have...as you can see, we're still pulling some dirt there, but I think that's because I was going low. Pretty sure the surface where we're going to go is as clean and dry as possible, ready to install.

So now that we've done that, and perhaps we went out of order there but basically, before you mount, you really want to look at the spot where you're going to be protecting and decide the best way to mount both the sensor and the magnet. Now, on this door, you can't see the whole thing but this pane here, doesn't open at all. So, obviously, if you had a slider that went both ways, you would need two contacts, one on both sides. In this case, only this portion moves, so this is the only door we have to protect. They do have one of these security arm bars that comes down and protects the door so it can't be opened. So one of those...you've seen it...a piece of wood in the track. So there's other ways that this door shouldn't ever open, but in case the homeowner forgets and leaves it unlocked with the bar and someone were to open this door, we want to make sure that this contact sets off the alarm.

So when we look at our installation spot, we're considering the magnet and the sensor, and also the size of the door edge and the frame. Normally, we like to put the sensor on the fixed portion or the frame, and we like to put the magnet on the moving portion or the door. Because that way, if you're going to slam the door, you're not rattling the circuit board in the contact, you're just rattling the magnet and the sensor is safe on the frame. However, we can't really find a good spot.

We considered doing this, but the homeowner didn't really like the look of this beveled contact on the side there. If we went to here, we would be too far away from the magnet. It needs a closer position to be "Ready To Arm," and we can't really go like this in any kind of good manner. So in the end, we're going to go against convention, because we have to, and we're going to put the sensor on the door and the magnet on the frame so that when you open the door, you get your fault and when you close your door, it goes back to "Ready To Arm."

And we want to install this on the door so obviously, keep in mind, if you keep this open and you put it all the way to the left edge, when you close the door, it's going to jam up against the side and this will get knocked off. So you want to make sure your door is as tightly closed as possible, and even then you want to probably leave a good quarter-inch just in case when you slam the door, it doesn't get any closer. You just don't want this item to pop off of the door when closing. But we have a nice bit of door edge here, enough that we can mount it and still have a little bit of clearance and then get our magnet in.

And when we're looking at the position of the magnet, the magnet has to go in between the hash marks. There's one hash mark on that side, and there's another harsh mark on that side. And as long as the magnet is in between the two hash marks, then it's going to work. If we mounted it with the hash marks over here, we would never get a fault or a restore. It just wouldn't work at all. Once we put the magnet on the right side, then we're getting the fault and the restore.

So now that we've described how to properly protect this door, we've chosen our intended location. With it programmed, we've put it up where we want it and we've simulated the door opening and closing to make sure it's going to work. On a metal door, that's very important. A lot of metal doors, you can have interference where the sensor may not work very well. Either the metal of the door is affecting the transmitter or I've seen the magnet gets drowned out by metal where it's not actually faulting ever. So it's very important that you program it and you test it a few times before you permanently mount it. I'm confident though, it's clean and dry, we're good on our installation spot and we're ready to mount it.

So, we take our double-sided tape here, and I'm going to take the smaller portion...actually I'm going to go with the bigger portion, first. You just remove the backing, here. And it's almost a square, but more like a rectangle and you basically remove the tape trying to do your very best not to touch the sticky part as best as you can. They don't have a good connection or a good perforation here, to where the magnet tape goes, so...in fact, we don't have any perforation at all on this. That'll be some beta feedback for Honeywell. I'm going to have my partner hand me my scissors so that I can cut the smaller magnet portion of the sticky part, and have the bigger piece for the contact. I'm sure Honeywell will have that resolved by production, but we're just going to trim this down.

And now we have our sticky portion that we're going to put right on our backplate, just kind of centrally mount it. It's not going to cover the whole backplate, you just need as good surface area of contact as you can. And then we're not going to press hard, because again, we don't want to put fingerprints on the sticky part. But accounting for the hash marks...don't forget hash marks towards the magnet. We're going to mount this up to the top edge as best as we can, making sure that we leave a little bit of a gap in case the door slams shut and pushes closer to the frame.

And with it lined up to actually...well, so this back tamper tab, ideally, it would have been pointing down for easy access. In our case, we can't because we have to have the hash marks in, so we're just going to go for it here. And we're going to stick and push as hard as we can to get as best sticky tape contact to the door. I'm pulling against the door, back towards me, and I'm pushing the sensor towards the door and we just really want to make a good, tight bond there so that this sensor has no chance to ever fall. And give a little tug up and down. I can feel it's got a really good connection. And again, over many years, especially if it gets hot or cold, over time, that can come down. Maybe over three, four years, you replace that with new tape. And if you had used screws, it would have been ideal but in our cas,e we really couldn't do that.

Now, we're going to take our little magnet piece, the leftover sticky that we had, and we're going to fix it to the back of the magnet and remove the back. I missed a bit so I'm going to re-position. And we've cleaned this surface area as good as we can, it's as dry as possible and we're going to fit this magnet down into this space so that it's in between the hash marks. I'm going to open this up just a tad so I can get in there better, but accounting for the same position.

And again, really tight, I'm gripping behind the magnet and pushing both thumbs, firm pressure, to the door so that this magnet should not come down. This is a much lighter unit, not that this is heavy, but it doesn't need as much tape because obviously, it's a smaller device. So, moment of truth. We have our magnet in line with our sensor with the door closed, our panel is reading "Ready To Arm," which you can't see but we're going to show you when we open. Back sliding door we hear the chime, we hear our siren chime and when we close it, we're back to "Ready To Arm."

We want to close it with a little bit of force and make sure that this isn't getting knocked. We gave enough of a slam that we know there's really no way that this contact will ever hit to the frame and knock off. And we're going to tell our homeowners just to be careful when opening and closing the door so we're not slamming the circuitry in there. Not that it's that delicate but any time it's electronics, you don't want to be banging around.

And we now have SIXCT contact installed on our back sliding door. If this door opens from the outside, if it's left open and the system is armed and someone tries to break in this way, we're going to get an alarm sound. If we're monitoring our kids going to our back deck, we get the nice chime annunciation when the door opens and we know, "Hey, young Johnny just ran outside, we better go see what he's up to."

So that is our installation video of the SIXCT Lyric wireless door and window sensor. We hope you've enjoyed that installation video. It's applicable for, of course, other door and window sensors that aren't used with the Lyric. If you're looking for a way to protect the back sliding door, this video would be helpful for you. If you have any questions in installing a SIXCT on any door or any sensor on a back sliding door, please email us, support@alarmgrid.com. And we invite you to subscribe to our channel as we'll be releasing a lot more installation videos based around a Honeywell Lyric and a SIX series sensor installation.