Five Practical Hints for a Secure Home

It is an unfortunate fact that no house can be 100 percent secure, even if you have the most technologically advanced home security system money can buy. If a criminal is bound and determined to get into your home, he will get in one way or another. That being said, there are steps you can take to make your house so unattractive to burglars that it isn’t worth his time or effort to break in. You can also increase the security to the point where the risk of getting caught outweighs any sort of score he might make once he gets inside.

The two best deterrents to any criminal are attention and time. The more noise he has to make and the longer it takes to break in, the better the chances are that he will get caught. Most burglars are going to pass up on houses that look more difficult to break into and move on to easier targets. To make your house require more time and attention to rob, follow these five practical hints for a secure home.

1. Use several lines of defense instead of just one. A home security system is good. Motion-activated exterior lighting is better. Double locks, a driveway alarm, rosebushes around windows, barred windows and glass break alarms are best. Advertising these layers of defense will help a criminal assess the ease of breaking into your house and quickly decide it isn’t worth it. If he does try to get in, the several different layers will slow him down long enough to increase the risk of getting caught to the point where he will abandon the attempt.

2. Try to break into your own house. Take a look at your house from the street and determine where hiding spots could be exploited. Check out the strength of your locks, look in windows to determine if any valuables can be seen and try to bypass your security system. Alert the monitoring company that you are testing the system before you try this so they don’t send out emergency personnel.

3. Secure the areas around your locks. Not only do you need strong locks, but you need to make sure the 18 inches surrounding the locks is secure as well. For instance, if there is a window panel in your door, the burglar can simply smash in the window, reach around and unlock the deadbolt. Criminals do not care what kind of damage they do trying to get in. They will do whatever it takes, be it smashing glass or kicking down a door.

4. Plant cactus or rosebushes around all lower windows. This will not only increase the aesthetics of your property, but it will also add a thorny deterrent for criminals. Windows are a very common entry point for burglars, but if there are thorny bushes in the way, they will think twice about trying to get in.

5. Safety coat lower windows. This is plastic sheeting that makes glass hard to break. Burglars will have to hit the window numerous times before it will break, which again increases the odds that they will get caught. Most glass shatters on the first hit, so when a burglar finds that he cannot simply smash and grab, he might just give up.