Guest Post - Convert Your House into a Fortress

Ensuring the safety of your family and keeping your hard-earned assets secure starts with protecting your home. As such, proper, effective home security is significantly important whether you do or do not have home insurance. You can do a number of things to improve the security of your home. But with the availability of so many home security resources, you may find the task of gathering and implementing affordable, effective practices a little bit overwhelming. To help you get started, below are a few easy-to-implement, relatively inexpensive tips. 

Install an Alarm System

An alarm system is the most basic security feature. In case of an intrusion, alarms will provide an immediate warning. If you don’t have one, having an alarm system installed is a great idea. Alarm systems do not ensure the apprehension of burglars. Instead, the strengths of an alarm lie in drawing attention and deterrence. Because criminals usually look for an easy mark, even security system decals can act as a deterrent in many cases. The overwhelming majority of thieves will over on to another target once they discover an alarm system. But if a burglar chooses to ignore your home alarm system, an ear blasting siren will quickly alert you of the intrusion and help ensure a short visit. Just be sure the system’s keypad is not visible from a window, in which case it would be easy for potential intruders to see whether your alarm is armed or not.

Advanced home security systems come with several beneficial features including wireless connectivity, high-definition security cameras, motion sensors, home automation capabilities, and monitoring services. As a result, they allow homeowners to control their home alarm systems from mobile devices regardless of their location. You can, therefore, give the impression that you are home when you are actually on vacation. Advances in video-imaging technology have increased the role video surveillance plays in home security. We can now record and playback camera feed footage from anywhere in the world. Aside from allowing remote monitoring and eliminating the risk posed by visible telephone lines, wireless systems can be installed without drilling. 

Install Security Lights

Statistics show that burglary rates go up by an average of 26 percent in the second half of the year. The same study found that intruders often take advantage of shorter daytime hours. Nighttime is the prime time for burglars to strike since the darkness allows them to slink through unnoticed. Well-placed security lights will improve visibility and help keep intruders away. Having a well-lit exterior is, therefore, wise. Make sure all your entrances are properly lit, particularly areas where you have a security camera installed and in the back of your home. If your budget allows, motion sensitive security lights are a good addition to the areas you’d not want to have constant light. Motion detector lights work by advertising the intruders’ presence and can be turned off easily during planned activities. Adding these lights is an easy way to enhance your home's security and deter criminal activity.

Secure Your Garage

Garages are one of the easiest access points for intruders to get into houses. Luckily, homeowners can prevent a significant percent of burglaries by taking measures to reinforce and secure their overhead doors, windows and service doors. Garage door security systems play an important role in securing any home.

To keep potential burglars from casing your garage, you can use curtains, blinds or shades to cover the glass or apply translucent films to your glass inserts. Plastic films can obscure vision but still let in enough light. Because windows are relatively easy to break or pry open, most burglars will try to come in through a window, particularly in the absence of an open door. Since breaking one is often a noisy affair, it helps to keep your windows locked whenever possible. Windows that you don’t open should be screwed shut. But you can ensure ultimate window security by adding strong bars across the windows to restrict access in case thieves break or pry open the window. If there are any problems in your garage, make sure to get them fixed as soon as possible.

Service doors that are less likely to split are a lot more resistant to brute-force attacks. As such, installing metal lock sleeves and good-quality dead bolts enhances the security of your service door. Dead bolts that have an ANSI Grade-1 rating are the most effective though Grade-2 options can offer above-average security. However, having the best dead bolt installed will not help unless you have the door reinforced. So, make sure you strengthen the doorjamb and hinges before you install the dead bolt.

Leaving the garage door open invites burglary because by doing so, you will be displaying a lot of your possessions to passersby. Unfortunately, most of us tend to forget to close our garage doors or have kids who forget. Fortunately, modern-day garage door security systems present an easy solution. Timers work by signaling garage door openers to close the door once a pre-configured amount of time elapses. Aside from allowing you to set the amount of time that will elapse before the door closes, you can override the control whenever you want the door to stay open.

Disabling the overhead door also helps secure your garage, particularly when you are away. All you need to do is unplug the garage door opener. For those who don’t have one, you can disable the garage door by padlocking the latch or putting a bolt through any of the holes in the door’s track. Times come with sensors installed on garage door tracks and a keypad that connects to the door’s opener control. The installation work takes about an hour. Once you’ve hit the close button, you'll want to wait until the door closes. In this way, you’ll drive away sure it did not reopen, which helps to keep intruders from gaining access while you’re away.

Keep Vegetation Trimmed

Of course, home security is not always generated from devices, which means you must be responsible for your actions to help maintain a high level of security. Addressing your habits helps reduce the likelihood of burglary. Before you leave the house, make sure you’ve closed and locked every door and window. Although having tall hedges around your home will most likely improve your privacy, it provides a safe hiding place for potential burglars. Make sure your doors and windows are visible from the street by trimming back any shrubbery obscuring the view. Refrain from planting tall trees close to your house. Such trees can provide access to upper-level windows, most of which are rarely barred.

Conclusion

When all is said and done, the safety of your family and property starts with proper home security, which is the responsibility of each individual homeowner. Better practices can, therefore, help keep intruders way.

Author's Bio

Forrest Perry is a garage door specialist at Garage Door Services in the US. He helps their customers choose the best type of garage doors as well as get their existing doors serviced at affordable prices.