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Old 09-19-2015, 08:57 PM
 
51 posts, read 61,159 times
Reputation: 46

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I've become a bit paranoid over the last year or so about home invasion. I think this started about the time I linked up to several local Facebook pages directed at neighborhood watch and so forth. It just seems that I hear much more frequently about incidences in my city: burglaries, weirdo people looking in car windows or filming down residential streets, a lot of new homeless people milling about - digging in our recycle bins on garbage day… you get the idea. I'm sure many of you are dealing with the same things.

I figured it would be good to start a thread where you all can post your home security tips, things to watch out for etc.. maybe things that aren't as obvious as security alarms and locking doors. Keep in mind these tricks may not work for everyone - not everyone has the same doors/windows/construction etc...

Here are a couple of mine:

Garages:
Burglars can easily get in by using a coat hanger jammed in through the top of the garage door (under the framing).. sometimes they even gouge out a hole in the garage door itself. They then hook the manual pull-down release cord, their hook catching the handle, they pull and - voila, the garage is now unlocked and they can lift up & open.
The fix: cut the handle off the release cord. I even cut my cord a little shorter. For even better protection, there is a way to zip-tie shut the release latch. The zip-ties don't prevent manual operation (because enough force will snap them) but they will prevent thieves from getting into your garage by means of a coat hanger. They just don't have the force from their position outside to break the zip-ties.

Back sliders being lifted of the track:
There is often a LOT of extra room at the top of sliding glass doors allowing a burglar to lift the door right off the track. This method is silent and not too difficult to accomplish.
The fix: install self-tapping screws above the sliding panel to prevent it from being lifted from its track. I just did this today - my door frame is metal, not vinyl: I had a LOT of room above my two sliders (almost an inch) making lifting them off the track relatively easy. I used three 2-inch screws above each door, spaced evenly, screwed from the front (face) all the way through the lip on the opposite side. So now if I open the door and look up into the track, I can see the entire length of the screw running from right to left. There is NO way it can be lifted out of the track now unless I manually removed the screws from the inside.

Also a good idea are track locks - cheap mechanisms that screw down tightly preventing the slider from being opened. You can place them wherever you like, even when the slider/window is open: open only enough for a breeze to flow through but not enough for an intruder to come in.

Another trick is to use cut a dowel just wide enough to place in the track - this will prevent the door from opening. A clever burglar could pop it out of the track if they broke the glass though.

Speaking of breaking glass: I found today that there are glass-break sensor alarms that can be purchased for relatively cheap - they stick to the glass and have an on/off switch. Glass breaking will trigger the very loud alarm, and burglars do NOT want to draw attention to themselves. I am going to look more into these.. some get really good reviews on Amazon.

Interior:
Webcams that run off your wifi can be purchased for around $100. Some will notify you of motion or sound via an text, email or smartphone ap. Very useful. I have one of these and it's been very reliable.

Put lights on timers when you are away overnight - this will give the impression that someone is home. You could also leave a radio on, or the tv.

Some obvious ones:
Lock your side gate.
Don't let mail, packages, phone books etc pile up on your front porch while you are away.
Don't leave your garbage can out on the street after it's been dumped - have a neighbor bring up the bin if you're going to be gone.

Also, for you renters: get renters insurance. It's pretty cheap (like $20-25 per month). At least this way you won't be out the expense of replacing all your items in the event someone does get in. I'm guilty here: mine expired and I have not renewed it yet.
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Old 09-19-2015, 11:17 PM
 
Location: San Antonio, TX
11,495 posts, read 26,728,423 times
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Here's a few:

Leave your outside lights on at night.

Don't leave your trash cans where they're easy to hide behind or to climb on to get over a fence.

Buy a big peephole viewer for your front door, one that lets you see down to the ground and on either side of the person at the door, not just their face. You may need a bigger drill bit to install one of these, it just depends on the kind. You can get one with a decent angle of view that looks normal from outside.

Put padlocks on your outside electrical boxes and AC breaker box to prevent tampering.

If you're really paranoid, you can get locking caps for your refrigerant lines on your outdoor AC unit so no one can steal your refrigerant. It's not a key, just takes a special tool to unlock but still makes tampering less likely.

And if you own firearms, hide them in different places around the house, somewhere less obvious than under the bed or on the shelf in the bedroom closet.

My next two security improvements at home will be outdoor cameras and some additional exterior lighting. After that I want to add a steel screen door. My neighborhood has a dumb rule that you can only get a barred door after your house has been broken into, but I'm hoping if I get one of the very decorative screen doors, they'll allow it.
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Old 09-20-2015, 12:11 AM
 
Location: Texas Hill Country
23,444 posts, read 13,678,468 times
Reputation: 18637
Camouflage Security

For many years, decades actually, I lived in an apartment complex which many of the locals nicknamed a ghetto. Hence, what is there to steal for someone who would live there?

When I moved, however, problem was two fold. First of all, in moving, others saw what I had. Secondly, it was to an area that didn't fall under "Camouflage Security". Hence, since then, I've "invested" in ADT, heavy vaults, and who knows what else.
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Old 09-20-2015, 03:20 AM
 
51 posts, read 61,159 times
Reputation: 46
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hedgehog_Mom View Post
Here's a few:

Leave your outside lights on at night.

Don't leave your trash cans where they're easy to hide behind or to climb on to get over a fence.

Buy a big peephole viewer for your front door, one that lets you see down to the ground and on either side of the person at the door, not just their face. You may need a bigger drill bit to install one of these, it just depends on the kind. You can get one with a decent angle of view that looks normal from outside.

Put padlocks on your outside electrical boxes and AC breaker box to prevent tampering.

If you're really paranoid, you can get locking caps for your refrigerant lines on your outdoor AC unit so no one can steal your refrigerant. It's not a key, just takes a special tool to unlock but still makes tampering less likely.

And if you own firearms, hide them in different places around the house, somewhere less obvious than under the bed or on the shelf in the bedroom closet.

My next two security improvements at home will be outdoor cameras and some additional exterior lighting. After that I want to add a steel screen door. My neighborhood has a dumb rule that you can only get a barred door after your house has been broken into, but I'm hoping if I get one of the very decorative screen doors, they'll allow it.
I really like the big peephole viewer idea.. also locking my electrical box. Good ideas. I'm guilty of the garbage cans being too close to my fence but I'm so cramped for space. I do worry about someone climbing on them.
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Old 09-20-2015, 06:35 AM
 
Location: East of the Sun
450 posts, read 589,422 times
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Got two or more cars parked outside the garage? Take your garage door openers out of those cars as crooks can break in, take the garage door opener and walk right into your place.
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Old 09-20-2015, 08:07 AM
 
13,676 posts, read 8,940,773 times
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I shall add my two-cents worth:

We have a mobile home with land in East Texas, with lots of raccoons, etc. To keep them from the house at night I purchased these 'predator' eyes off Amazon:

Amazon.com : Aspectek Predator Eye Nighttime Solar Powered Animal Repeller - 2 Pack, Waterproof, Deterrent Light Nocturnal Animals : Patio, Lawn & Garden

While reading the reviews several people mentioned that they also act as a type of security measure. People see the small, flashing red light at night, and are led to believe that an alarm system is armed. I bought two packages (two in each), and placed two around the country house, and two at the city house in Fort Worth.

The lights are solar-powered, so must be set where they get some sunlight. Then, they blink all night.

Not too long ago I was pulling up to our country house at night (I'm usually home by dusk) and saw, from a pretty good distance (it is a very long driveway), the blinking light on the side of the house. My first thought was 'ah, the alarm system is set', momentarily forgetting about the varmint light.

We do have an alarm system at each house, but the only thing to warn intruders of such are those little signs they give you to post outside. Anyway, these lights are cheap, and have worked for two years thus far. As to whether they actually have kept intruders away, of course I can't say. But any little edge helps.
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Old 09-20-2015, 08:30 AM
 
248 posts, read 340,097 times
Reputation: 470
1) We don't own anything of such value that it would be worth breaking in for, we get a lot of stuff used and off the curb . Not into jewelry or artwork.

2) A couple of big, loud, territorial dogs. Even people who are invited are reluctant to come in until we leash the dogs.

3) People are home a lot as one of us works from home full time and the other works from home part time. Rarely take long vacations and when we do, we get a house/dog sitter. House isn't generally empty long enough for an opportunist to find an opportunity.
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Old 09-20-2015, 08:40 AM
 
2,382 posts, read 5,373,107 times
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We travel a fair amount and struggle with the constant flow of papers, flyers, business cards on the step and jammed in the door. Ironically enough - there's probably more of that crap out there when we are home than away as we go in and out the garage to the rear and the pet sitter comes in the front door and clears it away.

When we moved in the cop across the way mentioned that thieves around here do the fishing with a coat hanger for the pull on the garage door so we shortened that. We cut dowels for the slider and made sure it cant be lifted off track.

We invested a a much bigger safe - a three man job to move it. We had a couple smaller ones and switched after watching the idiots of storage war pop them open in all of thirty seconds,LOL
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Old 09-20-2015, 10:30 AM
 
Location: New Orleans, LA
1,843 posts, read 3,919,623 times
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I had a break-in a couple of years ago. The thieves broke a tiny kitchen window (over the sink), opened it, and climbed on a trash can to get in. They must have been really skinny to get in that way. The door right next to it had a larger window in the upper half of the door, but they didn't try that one.

The police told me three interesting and to me, surprising things about break-ins in my area:

(1) Break-ins of this type, in my neighborhood, usually lasted less than 2-3 minutes. Because of the "smash and grab" nature, monitoring systems are completely useless. By the time law enforcement arrives 15-20 minutes later, they are long gone. This is why they leave so quickly, whether they see an alarm system in place or not.

(2) If you have any glass windows at all that are not completely barred, it is completely senseless to expect that they won't be smashed in order to gain entry. The same is true for sliding glass doors.

(3) In my neighborhood, generally all they will take is money, drugs (legal or illegal), and guns. They would rather break into a number of houses for a couple of minutes each in order to find these things, than to break into one house, take longer to identify and remove valuable jewelry, electronics, TVs, artwork, and so on, risk getting caught by law enforcement, and end up having to fence items that could be traced back to them.

In my case, I had no money, drugs, or guns in the house so they took nothing whatsoever. How insulting! The house looked "tossed", with contents of drawers, closets, and cabinets strewn about everywhere but law enforcement said they are fast and weren't there more than a couple of minutes.

I'm not saying there is no reason to take precautions! Most definitely, there is, within one's budget for such measures. However, I would not want to spend more than I could afford for these precautions because if law enforcement was correct, they might not lower my risk of a break-in at all. However, they might help in your neighborhood because the situation there might be totally different.

Last edited by NOLA2SGF; 09-20-2015 at 10:45 AM..
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Old 09-20-2015, 10:37 AM
 
2,755 posts, read 4,382,844 times
Reputation: 7524
Security system signs outside (even if you don't have a security system - our local cops know this works).

Security system. The no-contract, install yourself ones are much cheaper and fine.

Leave on radios. Talk radio stations are best.

Leave on some lights, or have them on timers.

Motion activated outdoor lights.

Get to know and be nice to your neighbors, so that they actually feel some incentive to be an extra pair of eyes/ears. Let them know you will tell them if you ever plan on moving or are having major work done when you are not home.

Make sure you have renters/home owners insurance.

Hide the most valuable things. Keep jewelry in less conspicuous containers, in atypical places.


My apartment was broken into this summer. One neighbor saw the intruder trying to get in the front door for an extended period of time, actually thought he looked suspicious so purposefully looked at the person to get an ID if needed. But he didn't say anything, call anyone, do anything. Even when this neighbor later heard something happened in my wing of the building, he didn't say anything. Bizarre..... My upstairs neighbor HEARD the noise as the robber broke down my door, and actually came out of her apartment and peeked out to see what was going on. She said nothing, did nothing... and just assumed ?I was moving. Even though I never told anyone I was moving. She didn't call me/text me/email me (she had my number and has communicated with me in the past) or do anything.

I live in the midwest in an "urban" suburb close to a major city.
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