Making sure that your home is secure should be a priority not only because you want to protect what’s rightfully yours, but also because it could be the most important thing that you do to protect yourself and your family from potential intruders, which appears to be an ever increasing problem these days.
Lock Your Locks
When it comes to home security, the most important thing you can do is make sure your windows and doors are locked or at the very least, lockable. We no longer live in a time when its safe to go to bed at night with the door unlocked or even leaving the windows open, so always double check those locks and make sure that all latches, hinges and locks are functioning properly.
Light Up Your Lawn
Proper lighting outside your home is essential as it allows you to view your outside areas from the comfort and safety of your home interior, especially when you hear odd noises or sounds in the middle of the night. A bright porch light or even a motion-sensing light is perfect for home night time security to light up your whole lawn area and yard, although you will likely get neighbourhood cats setting it off from time to time.
Keep Out
Take a good look around your home’s exterior and try and evaluate where or how a potential intruder could find easy ways into your home and then make the appropriate or necessary upgrades or repairs to prevent this from happening and making sure that your home is secure. It can sometimes be a good idea to get an independent family member or friend who does not live at the property go around the property with you to give you a different set of eyes.
Clean It Up
If you have any clutter in the yard, such as gardening or lawn tools, place them in a locked garden shed or in your garage. This is very important to home security because an intruder could use almost anything lying around outside to get a ‘leg up’ or to break window to get into your home. With a little tidying, you can deter them by making their task more difficult, and more often than not, they will move on somewhere else. Intruders are always the hunt for ‘easy’ homes to enter and if you make it too difficult, or very high likelihood that they could get caught in the act, they will invariably leave your home alone.
Customise Your System
If making sure that your home Is secure is important to you and you don’t have a home security system, we suggest you get one. If you’ve recently purchased a home that already has a system in place, get the code changed ASAP. Before you bought the home, you will have had no idea who knew the alarm code that the former owners used. That’s why its important to change the codes.
Also don’t leave the alarm code written on a piece of paper lying around the house. The code to your security system is private information and it should be treated as such. Also, it is very common for people to use the same alarm code as they do PIN numbers on their credit card(s), so again, another reason to not leave these code numbers lying around. Another word of advice, when setting up an alarm code number, please do not use 1,1,1,1, or 0,0,0,0, or 1,2,3,4 as these will always be what an intruder tries during the 30 second grace period before the alarm goes off, and you would be surprised how many homeowners use these PIN numbers, so please use something personal to yourself.
Another item many people are starting to have installed on their exterior of their homes is a security camera monitoring system. These include cameras that are often connected to a video recording system so that any suspicious activity from an evening can be re-watched at a later date. often, these systems add to the detergent factor for an intruder. Some savvy home owners actually install ‘cost effective’ powered dummy exterior cameras that aren’t actually hooked up to anything and simply appear to an intruder like there is a full scale security camera system in place. You can order cameras like these cheaply on sites like Aliexpress.
Trim Down
If you have large trees, bushes or hedges in your yard, trim them to a level that will enable you to see out the windows with out your view being obstructed. If you hear a noise or a knock at the door, you need to be able to turn on an outside light (if its at night) to see outside a window before opening the door. An important rule of thumb is to remove or trim anything that may block your view of the outside in any way.
Security Doors and Door Peep Holes
Another great idea that can work wonders is to have a solid metal mesh security door added to your home’s front entrance (and or rear entrance). These can be kept locked and add that extra level of security making sure that your home is secure, especially in summer when you want to leave the main front door open for fresh air.
Also, consider having a ‘wide angle’ peep hole installed in your front door, so when people knock on your door, you can view them prior to opening the door to them.