Your home is your heaven, where you should feel safe and secure. It is the only place where you have complete control over who can get close to you or your family. Securing your home and family from all untoward instances should be high on your list of priorities.The most common threat to US homes is burglary. Although home burglaries may seem like a random occurrence, they actually are the result of a selection process. The burglar’s selection process is quite simple. Below we provide some useful security advice from experts that will help you keep your home safe.
Use High-Quality Doors and Locks
The first step is to toughen the target or make your home more challenging to enter. Remember, the burglar will simply bypass hard to reach targets. Experienced burglars know that front, back, or garage doors provide the weakest point of entry. To make the task difficult for the unpleasant guests, always use high-quality Grade-1 or Grade-2 locks on external doors to resist prying, twisting, and lock-picking attempts. Superior quality deadbolt locks will have a beveled covering to hinder the use of channel-lock pliers used to shear off lock cylinder pins. A good quality door knob-in-lock set will have a ‘dead latch’ mechanism to avert slipping the lock with a credit card or a shim.
Block the Sliding-Glass Patio Doors
Sliding glass patio doors make your family insecure and vulnerable as they are secured by latches rather than locks and can be forced open from the outside. This inherent vulnerability can easily be removed by inserting a stick or wooden dowel into the track. Some out of shelf blocking devices are also available that can be screwed down easily.
Secure Sliding Glass Windows
The instances of leaving windows open and unlocked occur at a much higher frequency than doors. An unlocked window, visible from the street may provide a good reason for a burglar to break-in. Sliding glass windows have latches rather than locks. Therefore, you should always use secondary blocking devices to prevent sliding them open from the outside.
Lighting Gives Signs of Life
Lighting inside the home provides necessary signs of life and activity at night. A darken home night-after-night may send the message to burglars that you are not around. It’s also not comforting to enter a dark place when you return home. You don’t have to turn the lights on or off as inexpensive light timers are available in the market to automate the task for you.
You can also use the same light timers to turn on the music which will further enhance the sense of occupancy. Exterior lighting is also very important as it allows you to see if a suspicious person is prowling in your path. If you can see a potential threat, you have a chance to avert it. Good lighting is certainly detrimental to criminals as they don’t want to be identified.
Security lights with infra-red motion sensors also provide added security as the heat-motion sensor can be attuned to sense body heat and can be programmed to reset after certain intervals. These relatively low-priced lights can easily replace an exterior porch light or side door light on single-family homes.
Install a Good Alarm System
Alarm systems definitely play a pivotal role in your home security plan and are effective, if properly installed and used. The reason why alarms systems discourage break-ins is that they increase the possibility and fear of being caught and arrested by the police.
All the home alarm systems should be equipped with a properly programmed bell or audible horn to be effective in case someone breaks-in. The burglar might be long gone, but if not properly programmed, your neighbors will have to listen to the alarm bell for hours, until it is shut off.
