I thought the $6 magnetic contact trick was nonsense until a job in Tulsa made me a believer

Nina Walker · 2026-09-29T19:00:05.235578+00:00

I have been installing alarms for 14 years and I have seen a lot of guys push shortcuts that end up costing more time than they save. About 8 months ago a guy I work with kept telling me to stop fighting with recessed contacts on steel doors and just use the surface mount magnets with a little shim behind them. I brushed him off because in my head that was the lazy way and I figured the gap would cause false alarms down the road. Then we picked up a 22 door commercial retrofit in Tulsa and the door frames were so warped that drilling for recessed contacts was a nightmare, so I gave his idea a shot on the worst three doors. Not one false alarm in 4 months of monitoring, and it cut my install time on those doors from about 40 minutes each down to 12. I still use recessed contacts on new construction where the frames are square, but on a retrofit with beat up steel? I am done doing it the hard way. Curious if any of you have found a spot where the surface mount shim trick backfires on you.

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I thought the $6 magnetic contact trick was nonsense until a job in Tulsa made me a believer | Alarm System Installers - Talk Freely