Home Security

Keeping you and your family safe is everyone’s main objective in everyday life. Your home is that one place that everyone believes is their safest place to separate them from the people outside. This is why you need to secure your home to the best of your ability.

The Front Door and Locks

The front door is the target of most intruders attempting to access your home. Most door hardware is only secured to the structure of the house using half-inch or smaller screws. This doesn’t give you much protection from an aggressive intruder. One swift kick to your door hinges and even deadbolts could give way, allowing people to enter your home.

The first thing you should do is replace all the screws in every door with 3-inch or longer screws. Then replace all your door knobs and locks with reliable pieces of equipment. This is not the place to go inexpensively. I know there is a lot of cool hardware you can use to secure your home, especially the electronic wireless locks. In the possibility of an EMP event you want to make sure the locks hold up with no power and you have the ability to get into your home with a key. It would really stink if you couldn’t get in if there was no power.

When it comes to your deadbolt, change out those screws as well and remove the trim of your door where the deadbolt is located and add an earthquake metal strap behind the trim. This will give you extra protection from someone trying to kick in your door. I did this to my house and when my house caught on fire, the fire department had a hard time getting into my home. All the equipment they used to get in caused the door frame to crack, finally giving them access to my home.

Windows

Windows are the next target for intruders, so this is your next place to upgrade your security. Replace any broken windows, remove the window trim, and add weatherstripping to help with air leaking into your home. These actions will also help you with your electric bill and reduce the amount of potentially contaminated air coming into your home.

I also recommend you replace any broken or loose window locks. My mother-In-law’s house was broken into just by an intruder slipping a tool between the windows to slide open the old window locks. Next, I would place a piece of wood in the window tracks up and down and side to side depending on the direction your windows open. The most affordable way to achieve this goal would be cutting closet rods to size and putting them into the tracks. This will help keep the windows closed. An intruder could break your window to get in, but most of them don’t want to create too much noise that could attract attention.

If you’re concerned about an intruder breaking your windows, you could add security film to the glass. When under attack, the window will still eventually break, but it will significantly slow them down from getting in and will create lots of noise which will help alert you and your neighbors that someone is trying to get in so the police can be called.

There are other, more expensive ways to secure your windows from intruders, such as adding rolling security shutters to your home. Here’s a company we recommend: Enviroblind Rolling Security Shutters

Here are some helpful tips to keep your house secure from intruders getting in through your windows:

• Keep these areas clear from trees and shrubbery. I know we all want our homes to look good but you’re giving intruders a place to hide and also blocking the ability to be spotted trying to get into your home.
• If you want to have beautiful landscaping near your windows, I suggest beautiful thorny greenery, making it very uncomfortable for potential intruders to hide behind.

Secure your Perimeter

Side gates are another way intruders get behind your home and hide their actions from watchful neighbors. Make sure the wood of your fence is in good repair and the locks to your gates are working correctly. In my area, back when the recession hit and the housing market wasn’t very good we had a lot of empty homes throughout our neighborhoods.

A crime ring would break into these empty homes and use them as a base station for their criminal activity. They would go into the house’s backyard, take down pieces of the fence, go into the adjoining yard, and break into people’s homes. Depending on the house’s relation to the adjoining fence they could break into four people’s homes and no one would see them. So once in a while, walk your neighborhood and see if there are any empty houses and make note if there is any activity.

Garage Doors

Garage doors are people’s last thing they ever seem to secure. People believe that people can’t break into your garage. This is not true! Please don’t slack when it comes to your garage security. I try to tell people even though it looks good, don’t get garage doors with windows located at the top. Intruders have been able to break those windows, gain entry and pull down on the red cable disengaging your garage door opener. This gives the person the ability to lift your door. Even if you don’t have windows it’s still possible for a person to push on the top panel of your garage creating enough space to put a tool through, reaching the same red cable and releasing your garage door. This has happened to one of my church members and he warned us this had happened to him and that he was told to add a shield in front of the release cable and block easy access to it. I also suggest when you leave town, place an object in the track so people can’t raise the door.

Here is another helpful tip when it comes to securing your garage: When you come home and you use your garage to get in, when you close the door, make sure the door closes all the way and make sure no one has snuck in while it was closing. I know all of us are guilty when we get home we just want to be inside and when we hit the garage button we just forget about it. You never know if something crosses the security beam or it hits something that fell while it was opening, causing your garage to reopen.

Please be safe out there!