FreezeAlarm Dialer Temperature Alarm FA-700 with 1 phone voice message notification / monitor for low or high temperature extremes / No monitoring fees

I bought FA-700 FreezeAlarm after coming back from a vacation last year and the furnace had tripped a breaker. Fortunately it was Oct. and the temps were still above freezing. I started to look at different freeze alarms. I needed something simple, functional and affordable.. The FA-700 fit the bill. I just programed my cell number and plugged it in. That's it! To test it I put the unit outside the window in 20 degree weather. In 20 minutes my cell phone rang with the unit's prerecorded message. You can spend more for a freeze alarm but you don't have too.

It's 2 o'clock in the morning as I write, and 10 degrees below zero outside. We just got back home after being woken from sleep by a phone call from the freeze alarm warning us that the temperature in our lake house had dropped below 45. When we arrived up there, the boiler was off and the house temperature was 42 and dropping. We were able to restart the boiler and warm up the house in time to avoid a disaster. There are other freeze alarms with more bells and whistles, but this one is easy to use and most important, it works. The FA700 was already a small investment in exchange for a lot of security -- but it paid for itself tonight!

Nice unit. Programming a phone number in is super easy, and so is placing the test call. The only thing that bothered me was I found out after arrival, and after all my (what I thought was) thorough research, that this needs a DSL filter installed if that's your mode of internet service. It works with out it, but it's super crackly. Not their fault, but should be easier to find this out so I could have added a DSL filter to my order. Test by putting it outside worked fine, and I'm much more comfortable with leaving home for a week at a time during these cold Montana winters.

I set up the FreezeAlarm in a vacation home my wife and I own 2 1/2 hours from New York City. During the winter our visits are erratic and weeks can go by between stays. So our need for the FreezeAlarm seems obvious. However, if you're in a similar situation and your second home (like ours) is in a rural area where power outages are not uncommon, the FreezeAlarm's AA battery backup is limited. Let me explain.We lost power during a long interval between visits this past April and in a day or two the FreezeAlarm called to announce its batteries were low. At the time I didn't put 2 and 2 together to understand what the call implied -- that the house had lost its electricity and the FreezeAlarm had been running indefinitely on battery power. The FreezeAlarm's manual states: "Typically, most good alkaline batteries should provide approximately 12 hours of continuous power." However, it also states that "If the back-up battery voltage drops below 2.35 volts, a low battery alarm will be sent, even when the unit is powered by the AC power adapter."In other words, low-battery messages convey very little information about the state of the FreezeAlarm ... or the house where it's installed.In our case we'd lost power not because of a storm but because our house had been broken into and the thieves had switched off the circuit breakers in the basement, evidently fearing we had an alarm system. True, this might be an unusual scenario -- and if your second home *does* have an alarm system that notices when thieves shut off the power (and notifies your security company) then you can safely ignore my warning. Still, our unfortunate experience points up a serious limitation in this low-end product -- one that can call with only one of two messages: that your temperature has dropped to 45 degrees (or climbed above 85 degrees) or that the unit's batteries are low.Which is a longwinded way of saying that if you're considering a product like this one you may want to invest in one with a little more versatility ... one that can explain its state (and the state of the house in which it's installed) with greater clarity. If nothing else it's clear that 12 hours of continuous power isn't much for a battery backup -- especially if you're far from the house in question and totally in the dark about why you're receiving that low-battery message.

We had a furnace failure early in the heating season which increased my concern regarding our annual 3+ months in the South. We are in the northeast and today our low temps are in the minus. Clearly a furnace failure would mean serious damage to plumbing and heating systems. The install was straight forward. It had a test mode, that placed a call to your phone of choice, in this case my cellphone. I wanted to be certain that it would work in a failure to I placed ice packs around it and waited perhaps 10 minutes. The call came in with a freeze alarm. Its an extra layer of security if your away and heating fails. I consider it as cheap insurance. Got to love technology when it works.

The unit itself worked, but the cheap chinese power supply never made it to spring. I was in AZ and didn't figure this out until this year when I left. Plugged it in and no lights. Figured it just needed batteries. Added batteries and it worked fine. The real joke is they want nearly 42 bucks to send a new power supply alone. What junk. I can buy a whole new unit for that money! What junk. And of course, it's now 46 days past the 1 year warranty.

Very easy to set the phone number into it. It has a test button to ensure the number "took". I even set it in a cooler with some ice and waited a few minutes and sure enough it triggered the phone call. Very nice, gives me a little piece of mind about conditions in my Wisconsin house when I am in Florida in January.

I found it to be very easy to install. It is the best way to prevent water pipes from freezing when u are away from home, lucky that so far it hasn't had a reason to call us.