How to Setup Your Home Protection

Let’s prepare our house first before we do anything else. Make sure all your windows have secure locks or bars. Normal vertical windows have a lock that is usually too high to reach from the ground outside and require the window to be broken to get access to the lock. Make sure these locks are installed, working and locked. Sliding patio doors should have a door brace installed. Use motion activated flood lamps on the remote outside perimeters of your home. Next set some lights in your home on timers. These should be lights you normally use while you are home and lights that you would turn on at night and possibly leave on all night. Nothing will deter a thief, who is monitoring your house, more than a light coming on at 2 AM and going back out 15 minutes later. Timers are very affordable and most have more than one setting for turning lights on and off in a 24 hour period.

Now we need to look at our doors. If possible make sure all your doors that lead outside are made of metal, and if not metal at least solid wood. Dead bolt locks on a hollow core door are not secure. A good metal door with dead bolt lock will deter a thief before he even tries entrance. Don’t forget the garage door. If you have a manual garage door make sure the lock is functioning and or good quality. With an automatic garage door get an opener with a secure code system. Even if your garage door has a secure code or secure lock, lock the door between your garage and the house. I would much rather lose my lawn mower than my wide-screen television. 

Today to maintain a reliable home alarm system we should still have a telephone land line. We can buy systems that will work with a wireless cell phone, but that adds a lot of expense to the system. A lot of home owners find a need for a fax machine and to date we can only send a fax over a landline, giving this landline more than one purpose. This landline can either be the telephone companies wired line or a cable company’s line. Any landline will have a visible wire or cable that is on the outside of the house and can be cut by an experienced burglar. Put a trellis in front of the wire and grow some vines or flowers so the wire is not visible. 

Our next consideration is do we want a wired or wireless home security system? If you are building a home, the wired system is an alternative choice, as the cost of installation will be lower when installing while building the house. In an existing home a wired system installed properly can be very expensive, and most of that expense is labor. A wireless system such as Homesafe® can be installed in less than an hour as a completely DIY home security project. You can buy an affordable and reliable system for less than $150 and add any additional features you find a need for. In fact, if you have a large house, you can buy two systems to monitor different areas or buildings at a fraction of the cost of a wired system. Your system should include a base unit with auto-dialer to contact the police. Then you should have window and door sensors and a motion detector in areas where something valuable as electronics or jewelry is kept. You really don’t need window sensors on a second floor unless that window is very accessible; good window locks will be sufficient. Other things you can add to your system are water sensors and fire detectors. One more very important thing about a wireless system is that it is very mobile. If you had an intruder, and you’re alarm went off, chances are he now knows where your sensors are and he/she could return. It is recommended that when your system is triggered you analyze your system and its efficiency. You may want to move some sensors or add a sensor. With a wireless system this is easily accomplished.   

Some people think they have to hire an “alarm company”, and I won’t say this is a bad thing, but it is an expensive alternative. A good wireless self-contained system will do the same thing an alarm company will do. Your system can auto-dial the police, and then auto-dial you to verify or disarm the system. If you are in the house a loud alarm will not only wake you up, but it will startle the intruder and cause him/her to flee. It has been found that in urban areas the response time can be 8 to 11 minutes for the police unless you happen to have a police car passing in front of your house. Why add additional time to notify a security company, who will verify the alarm and then call the police? Good burglars get in and out quickly. They are trained to run in the event of encountering home owners, bright lights, alarms or sirens. The real professionals that can disarm systems, cut glass and lower themselves from skylights aren’t going after the average home. They are going after banks, jewelry companies and warehouses.

Before I close let me go over some common mistakes homeowners make around the house. Hiding keys outside the home usually doesn’t work, as thieves know the likely hiding places. Repair immediately any broken door locks, window locks or faulty garage doors. Clean up your landscape. Leave visual access to your back yard and front of the house, so not only you, but your neighbors can keep watch. External flood lamps are more effective if you don’t give a burglar someplace to hide. 

Keys should be treated as if they are to keys to your gold! Even the most trusted friends will not oversee a set of your keys like you would. Guests in their home could steal these keys and your friends may never miss them. Don’t leave your house keys in a vulnerable spot such as your automobile dash or seat. A thief can open a car door or break a window in seconds. With today’s information on the Internet they can get your address from your license plate. If you leave your car keys with a repair shop or parking attendant separate your house keys from the car keys.

If you have an outside storage shed, it probably has tools and even a ladder inside. Make sure the shed is securely locked. When buying a new computer, television or other expensive object, either cut down the boxes to fit inside your garbage can or give them to the garbage man as he arrives. An alternative would be to dispose of them in a trash container at work. Question strangers in your neighborhood and if you haven’t already, introduce yourself to your neighbors. Door to door salesmen can be burglars just sizing up your home. A sign that you will not talk to solicitors is not rude and will keep you from opening your door so they can see what you have inside. If your front door has a peephole great, but if it has glass panels, cover the panels with curtains or film that makes the glass one-way. Windows that look into your house from a porch or deck should have curtains that go above eye level and the top of the windows can be left uncovered for light.

If the alarm goes off, before you go to see what has happened, you need three things;

·         A cell phone to call the police, and use it first.

·         A reliable bright Maglite® flashlight to see where you are going and to shine in an intruders eyes if you confront him/her.

·         MACE® or Pepper Spray to disable an intruder, so you can get away and let the police take over when they get there. 

Homesafe® | DIY Home Security | House Security | | Wireless Home Security | MACE®