Tips for Preventing Home Robberies

While having good locks is an important first step to protecting your home, there are other precautions one should take in hopes of avoiding a home robbery.

1. Lighthing—Having a porch light by your door on at night is a great deterrent. Thieves are usually afraid of being seen. To go a step further, motion sensing lights are an excellent choice to light up your drive way or yard when something crosses the sensors path. If you will not be home to turn on the lights, consider adding a timer. The timer will turn on the lights at set times and give the appearance of someone being home.
2. Cameras—Normally thought of as just being for businesses, security cameras are now more affordable for the home consumers. Video evidence is great to have for any legal actions that can follow a break in. Decoy cameras are a cheaper alternative. Even though they produce no video, they act as a deterrent and make criminals think twice.
3. Yards—Keep your yard neat and tidy. Trim your plants and bushes so that they will not provide a hiding place for potential intruders.
4. Fencing & Gates—While not always an inviting appearance, their function is to help keep unwanted guests out. Having high fencing and secure gates can add another layer of complexity for a burglar to have to work around.
5. Window Locks—Windows are one of the most often utilized points of entry to your home. If you have low easily accessible windows, use the locks that came with the window. Furthermore invest in some screw locks, bars, or other devices that prevent the window from opening.

Most importantly of all, utilize all of the locks on your house and surrounding yard. If your gate locks, lock it up at night. Make sure all of the doors to your house are locked up before you go to bed. Secure all of your windows, pet doors, and other points of entry.

Most Burglars Are Not Trained Lock Pickers

Robbers will employ a multitude of methods to gain entry into your house. The most traditionally thought of method is that of picking a lock. But this requires skill, precision, and time. Many burglars do not have this skill or time, so they will go for the path of least resistance.

Some home break-in practices include:

1. Brute Force—The thief will plain out attempt to break down the door. Either by kicking it in or using another item to bust the door down.
2. Break the lock—Attempts will be made to pry off the lock with a wrench or pry-bar. The thief may attempt to saw off the lock or knock it off with a hammer.
3. Breaking the Glass—Front doors with glass panes may be decorative and pretty, but they leave your locks susceptible to attack. If a robber can simply break the glass and reach in to unlock the dead-bolt and door knob, they will. If you have a door with glass, it is advisable to get a dead-bolt that has a keyed lock on both ends. So even if they can unlock your door knob, the dead-bolt will stay locked.
4. The Door was just unlocked—People can be trusting and will not bother to lock their doors. Some people just forget to lock up when they leave the house. In either case, this offers an easy in for a burglar.
5. Drilling a Lock—Also falling under breaking the lock is lock drilling. The thief will just drill out the lock cylinder and hope that this will allow them to turn the lock open.
6. Spare Keys—Sometime people will keep a spare key somewhere outside of their house. And sometimes they will leave a key with a neighbor, while they go out of town or just for safe keeping. So a thief may have been watching you and saw where you put the key, or they may find it just by chance. You never fully know what your neighbors will do either, or what people they know.

Some Keyless Door Lock Choices

When you mention door locks, most people just think about keyed locks like deadbolts and locking doorknobs. But there is a whole second layer of locking devices that home owners have to ad to their door way.

A list of some possible anti-burglary door locking devices:

1. The Chain Lock—A good unit for when you want to peak out at who is at the door, but not completely let the door open. The set consists of a base with a chain that is attached to your doorframe or the closest wall stud. Then the chain receiver will be attached to your door. At the end of the chain will be a little catch that will slide into the receiver.
2. The Flip Lock—Keeps your door from being opened by adding some resistance. This unit is a hinged metal device. The base is installed in your doorframe, while the hinged metal piece is free to slide against the door. When it is in position it slides down into the metal slots and is in its locked state.
3. The Door Guard—This is the solid metal version of the chain lock. The set is a metal post with a ball tip that is covered with a metal loop. Like the chain lock, this set is good for when you want to partially open your door.
4. The Barrel Bolt—Like the name implies, this locking mechanism’s action is similar to a bolt-action rifle. There is a barrel with a handle on it that is lifted from a resting slot and slid over to a locking slot. When inserted in the locking slot the barrel will be in the housing for the barrel. Installation of this device can be done either horizontally or vertically.

These choices would be great additions to your front door, back door, or doors to other rooms in your house.

Remember “The Door Club”

When it comes to home invasion prevention devices for your door, the first items to come to mind are locks, deadbolts, and chains. Throughout the nineteen nineties, “The Club” was one of the leading car theft deterrents. To gain entry into the home defense market, the makers of “The Club” released “The Door Club”. The purpose of “The Door Club” is to reinforce the door from brute force break-in attacks on the doors of your home.

 “The Door Club” functions by resistance. It employs a bar to resist force applied to the door. For this to work, you must have the holder for the resistance bar installed into your flooring. If you’re handy you can install it yourself, or you can hire a locksmith to do it for you. Once the floor plate holder is in place, you have done the bulk of the installation. The other pieces to install are a kick plate for the door and a holder to hang the resistance bar on when you are not using it.

When properly installed, “The Door Club” is advertised to be able to resist two tons of force. The marketing chose to target traditional locks and deadbolts, claiming that they were no match for a brute force attack on your door.

Here is an early ad for “The Door Club”.

Businesses often don’t want to deal with a lot of building keys. Keys always pose a security risk, since over time they might disappear or someone managers to make some copies of them. The cost of replacing lost keys and replacing or rekeying door locks gets expensive as well. That is why most hotels and motels feature key card door locks. Having key cards help a company avoid the risks that come with traditional keys.

The key cards are just like credit cards. They use magnetic strips or Radio Frequency Identification(RFID) chips to hold a combination code that unlocks the door. The combinations can be changed at will by the company by just changing the code on the card and the door lock. There is no need to worry about who has a key to the door, as it is always a different lock.

The cards are great for companies, since they are just plastic and easily replaceable. And if a hotel guest does lose or keep one, no one will be able to do anything with it. The cards can also be personalized to the company and have images of products and/or company logos printed on them.

These locks would be an interesting technology to learn more about, but there isn’t a lot of information available online. And rightly so, since they would just be another threat to security.

Install a Wall Safe.

I’ve always liked safes, especially when they are hidden. I’ve tried to find some detailed instructions of choosing a wall safe, but nothing really comes up. I did find a couple of pages on installing a wall safe. The outline they give is pretty straightforward, but they ignore how they chose the safe

Basically you just:

1. Choose the safe. If it is going into the wall it can’t be too wide.
2. Locate the studs on the wall you want to put the safe in. You want the safe to fit between two studs, since the safe will be anchored to them.
3. After locating the studs, measure out an opening large enough for the safe. After you’ve drawn out your opening, you can begin to cut it out with a dry wall saw.
4. Watch out for electrical wiring when cutting out the opening. If the wires will be in the way, you must reroute or otherwise move them aside.
5. If your opening leaves a gap from the studs and the drywall, re-enforce it with some extra wood shims. This also depends on how your safe mounts. Your safe may mount with screws from inside the safe or it may have some mounting bolts on the outside.
6. Once your safe is in and secure, you can begin any cosmetic wall repair you need to do.

Some Reasons to Consider Getting an Intercom System

Intercom systems have become common place in businesses and even in some homes.

Like doorbells you can get a wireless or wired unit. Installing a wired unit can be a lot of work and will require invasion into your walls and wiring. So if you’re house isn’t already wired up for an intercom system, a wireless unit is the way to go.

With a wireless unit you can place the receivers wherever you want them. You won’t have to run all over your house looking for somebody, you can just call for them on the intercom. The fancier intercom systems come with features like video, radio and CD players, so that you can play music throughout your house or wherever the receiver is. With video, your intercom system can be like a security camera and let you see who is at the other end. And you can always just go with the traditional intercom system that is just for talking.

It is all up to your preferences and your budget.

Intercoms can be combined with door buzzer units, as is done on apartment complexes.

You use the intercom to contact your party and then they buzz you in. People with big houses like to do this too, so they don’t always have to rush to the door to let you in.

You’ve decided to get a CCTV security camera system. Before you go make your purchase, you’ll want to take some details into account.

• How many cameras will you need?
• Are your cameras going to be indoors or outdoors? If they are going to be outdoor cameras, you will need to get some weatherproof cases to protect them from nature.
• Do you plan to have wireless or wired cameras? This also determines where you can place them.
• Do you want to have black & white or color video?
• Do you want the cameras to have audio? It will cost more, but might be worth it.
• You will have to choose a recording device. Do you want a VCR or a DVR?
• VCR’s are quick and cheap, but tapes wear out and break over time. So you will have to keep buying more tapes. And VHS is an almost obsolete format, so you may not always be able to get them.
• DVR’s record directly to a hard drive, which will give you more options for recording and playback. And the picture quality is superior to a VHS.
• You must decide on a monitor to view the cameras and video. Televisions aren’t advised, since they are not designed for the constant use. Computer monitors are a little more durable and therefore a better choice.
• You want to match the resolution of your monitors with the resolution of your cameras. You don’t want to be wasting quality on either end. You don’t want high resolution cameras with a low resolution monitor and vice versa.
• Decide on what your security budget is going to be.
• If you want to slowly build up your security system, make sure that the system you start with is upgradeable.