How to Plan a Zoned Security System

Draw a layout of your home and include all of the doors, windows and sliding glass doors on the diagram. Add where you would like to place motion detectors, smoke detectors and other sensors.

Label the front door Zone One, the back door Zone Two and label the sliding glass doors Zone Three. Count the rest of your openings and sensors. These sensors must be divided between the remaining zones. If you have an eight-zone system and you have used zones one through three you will have five zones left, which must be allocated to the rest of the openings and any motion and smoke sensors.

Allocate motion detectors and smoke detectors to separate zones.

Combine window openings in a logical way if you do not have enough zones left to allocate each window to one zone. You may want to combine all of the downstairs windows on one zone and the upstairs windows on another zone.