You should be able to leave one area armed – i.e. the cellar.
I don’t ‘do’ security stuff per se, but get involved with it by proxy of other work.
Not aimed at you directly, but an alarm should leave vulnerable area’s armed all the time (unless specified not to)
As a guide, have a look at the Honeywell Galaxy panels, this is what I get involved in a bit and they can be programmed quite specifically to leave certain area’s alarmed – and at few hundred quid, much better than anything else i’ve seen (especially as they are, as i understand, specified for fitting into banks) – and you can have a keyprox to disable that area should you need to go in with an auto re-arm after X amount of time, or a keycode… all good stuff.
I hope you don’t mind the slight thread hijack, please accept my sincere apologies if its not appropriate.
Once again, you have my apologies.
jt