UL Burglar Alarm Certifcate

I believe that you need to be a certified UL installation company in order to issue a UL Certificate. The system also needs to be monitored by a UL Central Station. This document provides a brief overview of the process.

UL certified burglar alarm installations and monitoring used to be a big deal back in the 60's-70's-80's, but most alarm companies no longer offer this service. Only a few clients such as jewelry stores, furriers, and pharmaceutical warehouses need this type of service and this market just isn't big enough for the alarm company to justify the cost and hassle associated with the UL requirements.

Michael is correct across the board. I am unsure of the cost today, a few years ago it cost the typical alarm company about 5K to get certified annually, and that is 5K of profit dollars. With the limited number of customers that are required to have a UL certified system is very difficult to justify the annual cost. The process in not hard though.

In the old days, only the bigger alarm companies such as ADT offered UL certified monitoring, primarily due to the requirement to provide "runners" who could respond to the premises when the alarm was activated. The UL required response time was relatively short, requiring that a company prettty much have someone on the road at all times, and limiting the geographical area where UL listed accounts could be sold.

This promotional video from 1958 shows the typical alarm monitoring and response arrangement of the day. The first part of the video shows fire alarm monitoring, the second part shows burglar alarm monitoring.

Most runners were armed, but also trained as technicians so that any system repairs needed could be done on the spot. As a result, you would sometimes see the interesting combination of tool pouch and revolver being worn on the same belt.