Though we don't keep a baseball bat under our bed like Laure does, we do worry about home security. We recently installed a motion detecting LED light in our once darkened stairway, are looking to install an additional keyless deadbolt into our front door, and we're planning to attend a 5-0 sponsored community event to discuss crime prevention in our occasionally sketchy neck of the hoods. We remember growing up in burbs and getting robbed a few times...until we got a German Shepard who had a fondness for stranger's back ends. Later, our parents got a home security system and motion detecting lights, and it's been quiet on the crime end since. How about you? What precautionary steps have you taken in regards to home security? And check out some tips after the jump to help make your home more secure...
The following is a checklist to assess your basic level of security. These are just some of the steps you can take to decrease the likelihood that your home will be targeted.
Inside:
- Always confirm identification before letting sales or service people into your home.
- Avoid leaving large amounts of cash in your home.
- Refuse to give personal details to telephone surveyors.
- Mark your possessions for easy identification.
- Keep a list of all valuables, along with their serial numbers and pictures/videos (a hard copy and maybe an additional stored on a flash drive).
- Firearms are stored unloaded and locked in storage boxes and secured with trigger guard locks?
Outside:
- Trim your trees and shrubs around your home for best visibility.
- Install lighting that illuminates dark areas around the house, garage or yard where someone could hide.
- Leave your front and back porch lights on at night, or use a motion detecting light that dims.
- Install additional motion-sensing lights installed around the house exterior in peripheral zones.
- Lock away ladders and tools out of sight.
- Make sure your exterior doors a minimum of 1 ¾” thick, and made of solid material to prevent easy forced entry.
- Secure all exterior doors with a deadbolt lock with a throw bolt at least 1” long, including the garage.
- Keep a spare keys with a trusted neighbor, not under a doormat or planter, etc.
- Secure door leading from the attached garage to the house with one made of solid wood or metal clad and protected with a quality lock or deadbolt.
- Avoid peepholes that allow easy surveillance from outside into your home.
- Keep windows securely locked at ground level.
- Install a locking mechanism for sliding glass doors.
- Lock all doors when away, even if for a few minutes.
When Traveling
- Keep two lights with set timers to come on after dark, and turn off in a logical sequence.
- Put a radio or television on timer to mimic someone being home.
- Suspend newspaper and mail deliveries while you are away.
- Leave a house key and a contact telephone number with someone you trust.
- Arrange to have someone pick up mail and circulars on a regular basis.
- Make sure your garden/lawn are maintained while you're away.
[Information and graphic courtesy of Owatonna Police Dept.]
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My security is remembering to lock my doors. That's about it!
We don't personally have an alarm system, but my apartment building is very secure! Cameras in the garage and lobby, alarm system, and access only via a fob. Our apartment door just has a deadbolt, but I feel quite safe. We are also way too high up to worry about anyone breaking in through a window!
We don't have anything worth stealing...
When my son was deployed in Iraq, one of the things he noticed was that many of the homes had gravel walkways and gravel borders surrounding the home. Try walking on gravel, you can’t be silent. Upon coming home he added a gravel mulch to all of the flowerbeds surrounding our home. Anyone approaching a window to break in, will be heard.
^^^An appropriate comment for your user name, ItsJustStuff :)
We have a German Shepherd mix, Kajol, who, while not very large, looks ferocious with her hackles raised - which happens everytime someone comes to our door unannouced. And then there's her buddy, Panda, a Malamute who looks ferocious at all times even though he'd give away anything to someone who rubbed his belly. Together they work as a pretty good deterrent team.
I have a mini-dachshund - about 15lbs., but he has a bark like a German Shepherd. Anyone on the other side of a door is none the wiser.
He's also really protective. He's been known to go nuts (barking and snarling) on the boyfriend when he gets out of bed to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and tries to get back in bed quietly.
In any case, a barking dog has been shown to be a better deterrent to burglary than an alarm system.
Wow, not a single option for 'none of the above'...which seems to suggest an assumption about some kind of extra secure protection...
But we don't. Just a plain deadbolt and plain old lock. And that's fine in my city.
And as juststuff said, there's nothing worth stealing here - what would they take - our 13 inch tv that you can't even attach a dvd player to? our kids' toys? nothing really.
As for gravel...well, the toys are a bit of a minefield, so if anyone did try to get in, they'd break their necks on some vehicle or other.
My boyfriend is a former police officer and military guy. I feel pretty safe with him around. :) That said, I also use the two lock system on the door (deadbolt and handle lock) and live in a secured electronic entry building.
This whole post has craziness shooting out of its ears.
There a motion sensor flood lights around my apartment/house, but just a standard deadbolt and doorknob lock on my door. I figure if someone's gonna break in, they're gonna do it no matter what. Hopefully they'll do when I'm home, and they'll wish they didn't.
Yeah, I'm one of THOSE etsy-buying knitters. Don't be fooled, I will take you down with these #8 circulars! :P
... my guard dog lacks the ability to... guard. But man oh man, would he hound that burglar relentlessly through the apartment until they gave in and played with his tennis ball. And if we know one thing about burglars, they are suckers for puppy eyes. haha.
I have a long, crunchy gravel driveway leading up to two large, extremely loud, ludicrously over-protective dogs. I don't even bother to set the latch on my door most of the time.
Since we live in a kinda sketchy part of town, we have an alarm system and a cricket bat under the bed (just in case), but the 30kg bulldog usually does the trick. Burglars have no chance of getting past him without copping a whole lot of barking/jumping... and neither do the postman, or the water meter reader, or anyone walking past the house, or the kids playing outside, or legitimate visitors...
Honestly, my 85 pound pitbull/rotweiller's number one favorite job in life seems to be to protecting the house, so no worries there. She sounds like a 200 pound beast when anyone approaches the front door. I've had suspicious lurking people run away when they see or hear her.
Outside of that, and since I do live in a street level house and not an apartment I do take some additional precautions.
1. Old 1970s beat to hell pick up truck with a gun rack (I bought it that way) I either park in the driveway or on the street (its my axillary go to the dump car), that makes it hard to tell if someone is home or not. It also makes it look like a crazy red neck with a gun collection might live here.
2. Pulling all shades down so no one can peek in or tell if the house is empty
3. Randomly leaving the TV or radio on sometimes
4. A security light in the back
5. I kept the alarm company stickers on the doors and windows even though I ditched the alarm system years ago. It still looks and reads like I have an alarm.
6. Timers on a couple of lights when I am out of town.
7. Always sleep with my cellphone next to my bed. I'm about 5 blocks away from both a police station and fire station and I'm very tight with all my neighbors so we really keep an eye on each other and help is only a few feet away.
8. I also recently acquired a stoner roommate who never seems to leave the house. That has been a great bonus security measure!
Oh, and let me add I try not to be too paranoid and yes, it is just stuff after all. But my house was broken into a few years ago, and that sucked since my both my laptop & computer and some very valuable and sentimental family heirlooms were stolen. The next door house was arsoned a couple of years ago (which freaked me out) and I do live in a high break-in area.
Also (up until the stoner roommate moved in last month) I lived alone and I'm also a hearing impaired woman so extra safety and early warning systems are important to me. I just say I'm cautiously careful, but not Jodie Foster panic room paranoid.
I have a wireless alarm system from GE I bought a few years ago, when I moved into a ground floor apartment with a ton of windows. I don't really care all that much about stuff being ripped off, but I don't want anyone to let the cat out - she's a front declaw and probably wouldn't last long out there on her own, poor baby.
The system's kind of neat - it actually calls me when someone trips the alarm, so I can go home and check things out (or have a neighbor stop by for a peek, to make sure the cat's not out). It'll also call in case of fire, which gives me some peace of mind while I'm away. Although this new building I'm in has sprinklers, so I figure a big roaring building fire is pretty unlikely.
living very close to the police station makes our home quite secure. additional to that we avoid to keep much money at home and we don't have anything which is woth to be stolen.
Aside from our existing security systems, our dog is a VERY good deterrant! (A relative who had been outside smoking had some bloke, clearly off his face on something, pull a knife on her - cue the dog. He ran.)
He barks at the drop of a hat (...probably literally), so I don't think we have much to worry about. Plus, it's quite a safe neighbourhood - there's been two burglaries on this street since we moved in fourteen years ago.
Well apartment buildings in Paris require a door code to enter - which is a pretty good system, though not foolproof. Also two deadbolts and a very strong live-in boyfriend who grew up on the wrong side of Detroit helps.
However, when I worked for the police sex crimes unit for a while, I learned:
-Walk to your door with your keys between first and second finger, secured in your palm, so you can use it has a weapon.
-BACK INTO your front door (when I lived in the US I unlocked my front door backwards), checking behind you, and make sure you shut the door before continuing (most of the stranger rapes occurred when a person would sneak up behind someone opening their door and force their way in)
- Make sure somebody in your neighborhood knows you and you can ask them for help (for me it’s the bartenders in the bar next door, who are good people to have on your side, I live in a very rough neighborhood)
Reading some of the case reports I read during that job, which make my stomach turn to this day, the basic tenement is don’t be paranoid, but don’t ever drop your guard.
Also, my boyfriend used to keep a couple guns in the house, but we couldn’t bring them to Paris and don’t feel like getting a permit here.
Guard dog? HA, unless my little Boston Terrier puppy can kiss a burglar to death I don't think she'd be much help. We just have deadbolts & chains on our doors, but we live outside of an Army post in a military community: burglaries aren't very common in this area.
Sure, stuff if just stuff, but my home was ransacked once when I was a student, and it makes you feel really violated.
Also, what about "stuff" like your person, your partner or your children? Lock your doors, people!
I'm fortunate to live in a high-rise doorman building, so burglaries are unheard of. Prior to living here, my home was in a rural area and so difficult to find, burglars would not have known about the house to bother. Prior to that I lived in a two-family home in the city where the landlord or someone in their family was home almost 24hrs a day.
"stoner roommate" LOL :-) An alarm system that pays you, now I could get on board with that. LOL
WC_Canuck has a good point -- "not a single option for 'none of the above'..." It's hard to remember that one community's norms is not universal.
If I lived in a place that generated such anxiety, my security action would be to move to somewhere safer!
rosenatti: While I don't have an alarm system or a gun, I don't see what's so crazy about considering the security of one's home.
My immediate neighborhood has had 15 (out of 98) front doors kicked in over the past 3 months. That's 15% of us that have been robbed! You start to consider the details when your neighborhood is constantly targeted. Especially when the damage from a kicked in door can cost around $1,000.
My security system: living in Canada.
I live on the 15th floor of a secured highrise - and I just installed a combination lock deadbolt on my front door.
http://consumer.schlage.com/electronics/default.asp
I wouldn't mess with that husky puppeh... :D
Having great neighbours that are home most of the time is also a great deterrent.
That puppy is trying so hard to look ferocious but just ends up looking so damn cute!
Well, let's see. My boyfriend and I are both in the SCA and we both heavy fight, so there are a lot of rattan weapons in the house. BF also collects swords, so we have a few good replicas on the walls as well as a few ornamental daggers. I have a few knives myself.
I also own a Shiba inu, normally good watchdogs, but he doesn't bark when people come to the door. He might if someone was in the house at a "weird time" but I wouldn't bet on it. Besides, we're pretty much more dangerous to an intruder than he'll ever be at 23 pounds.
That maze deadlock is a hoot! Need it!
Our new house, a customized edition of a builders design, came with (like it or not) an installed alarm system and combination lock on the front door. Which does not work. And is not connected to any service. But looks really cool -- I suppose! (Even the combination lock is set at a default, and nobody so far has been able to reset it to something we choose -- any of th construction crew can still get in at any time. Joy.
I'm writing from LA and i'm rather shocked to see that more people have weapons and alarm systems than motion detector lights...weapons? wow. what a frightened culture we live in.
I live in an apartment, so the building itself is always (ok mostly) locked and then my door has a deadbolt. After that its up to my attack cat.
for me the issue with breaking in isn't the 'stuff' part; it's that my HOME was violated, and therefore I feel violated. we had our house broken into a few years ago, and the stuff they took was insured, so the amount was recovered. not so my security. now we live in a top floor condo, fobs that only work for our floor and common access areas, dead bolt on the door, and a very vigilant strata council. we're also across the street from the police station.
as a last resort, i have no qualms about grabbing anything at hand and going medieval on the idiot who thinks they can steal/violate/destroy another's home and safety
pugluv, while motion detector lights are a great thing to have as part of your home security system, they will do nothing to deter someone who is scoping out your house. Professional thieves and those bent on other crimes know enough about motion detector systems to avoid or render them useless.
formosagirl - I completely understand. My apartment in Atlanta was broken into a couple years ago and it really didn't matter what they took (most of the time they don't know what you have until they break in anyway) it's the violation of my home, my sanctuary, my safe place that is no longer safe.. It was horrible.
We live in a secure apartment building on the 2nd floor. Sometimes we forget to lock our front door and it doesn't feel like a very big deal. Our front door came with a deadbolt on it, so we try to lock that at night. I live in Holland and haven't seen anything here to make us feel like we should do anything else...