Home security is incredibly important — not just in keeping your valuables Rife from potential burglars, but in keeping your family Rife as well. Many homeowners neglect keeping your family Rife as well. Many homeowners neglect to Improve their home security because they believe that Investing In a home security system Is beyond their means.
Individual Homes
However, you don’t need to Install cameras and alarms throughout your property in order to make your home more secure. The following are a few more affordable ways that you can improve your home security:
Maintain Your Landscape
Keeping your yard relatively clear will help to eliminate hiding spots. Because of this, It’s important to maintain your landscape by regularly trimming back bushes and branches — especially if they are blocking the view from your home. You’ll want a clear view of your yard from every window of your house.
Upgrade Your Locks
Use Grades locks, which are the highest grainy locks you can get. Make sure that there are locks on all your exterior doors and windows and that they are locked whenever you leave your home.
Install Motion Sensor Lights
Installing motion sensor lights outside of your home is relatively inexpensive, and It’s a great way to wam you and your neighbors that something is disturbing the night around your home, since any motion in the area will automatically turn the light on. Any burglars scoping out your home will quickly think twice and most likely turn away from the unwanted attention.
Use Light Timers
Light timers are a great investment if you are ever away from your home for more than a few days. Potential burglars that are scoping out your home will get the idea that you’re not around if the lights don’t go on for days. Leaving them on will have the same effect, since you’re not fooling anyone if you leave your lights on all day and all night long. Besides, this is a huge waste of energy. Light timers will allow you to set specific times for your lights to switch on and off, giving your home the appearance of being occupied.
Install Window Shades
Burglars that can’t see into your home won’t know what there is to steal — nor will they know if anyone Is at home. Window shades are one of the more affordable ways to make your home more secure, not to mention that you can help Improve your interior design at the same time!
Remove Your Name
Don’t place your name on your mailbox or on the exterior of your home. A potential burglar can use your name to figure out your phone number. Once the burglar has your phone number, It won’t take long for him or her to figure out if you are at home or not.
Put Tools Away
If you are using any of your tools outside, from your hammer to your ladder, be sure to put them away when you are done. Leaving them outside is a good way to tempt potential thieves to use these tools to get way to tempt potential thieves to use these tools to get into your home.
Light your yard
You don’t want your entire yard to be hidden In shadows. Use lighting to improve the look of your landscape, the safety of anyone walking to your home at night and the security of your home. For example, be sure to install lights alongside your sidewalk and by your entryway.
These are a few simple ways that you can improve your home security without spending a huge amount of money on complicated home security systems.
Residential Homes
Here’s a true story folks…
Few small actions can help to make you, your family and home more secure. Fortunately, someone had taken the effort to install an alarm that let his wife, neighbors and the local police know about the break in and his wife had let herself out through the back door across to the neighbor’s home before the intruder could chance upon her. The investment had possibly prevented harm from coming to his family. His advise to all his friends after this incident was
- Don’t take life for granted
- If it can happen to anyone it can even happen to you
- Plan for unforeseen situations
How To Secure Your Home and Family?
These are some basic steps to take when securing your home
and family.
- ASSESS the threats realistically
- PRIORITISE them based on chances of occurrence
- SEEK professional assistance to cater for them
- Where professional assistance is lacking or too expensive, us
- COMMONSENSE to draw up a PLAN to address the threats
- IMPLEMENT the plan in a scheduled manner
Assess The Threats.
This implies taking an objective view of the security situation In your own home as well as In your neighboring seas
Locate and identify the possible threats
Prioritizing Involves trying to assess realistically which of these threats Is likely to occur. This can be done by asking yourself a few questions..
- Which is a greater threat?
- Can this really happen?
- What are the consequences and how badly do they affect you?
- Which threats lives more than property
This exercise should logically lead to the following questions and their answers would be the solutions to them.
- What all measures need to be taken to address the most immediate threat
- Which of these measures need major time, effort or expenditure
- Which all measures require changes in routine to decrease the threat (for example change in timing for your sons piano lessons from late evening to mornings etc)
- Which all threats cannot be citered for and how to prepare an action plan for them
Having chalked out a thought process one can now draw up an action plan
Seek professional assistance
Security Consultants and firms are a dime a dozen. Choose one with care after consulting people who have experienced the service of these firms.
Firstly ask for a Security Audit of your home and thereafter for a quotation for implementation of the recommendations in the Audit. Be aware these firms too have to make a profit and that will be at your expense. Do not blindly follow everything they say.
Tips From The Experts.
Keep basic rescue equipment at home and in the car. “My sons rope ladder which he used to go up to his tree house saved our lives”, says Rebecca, mother of a 19 year old boy. Use common sense and decide based on your assessments of the threats and your priorities. There is no point in constructing an underground bunker against a perceived blast in local corner shop, just because the security consultant says so.
Plan.
Have a plan. It saves time, and when done in a calm and cool situation is generally good. it is better than having to think when in a tight spot.
Armies all over the world use drills and standard operating procedures which are essentially plans for out of the Procedures which are essentially plans for out of the ordinary situations and can be implemented with out having to waste time thinking about thing when they occur.
You needn’t start drafting plans for your wife to follow in case of a fire in the kitchen, but yes she should know where the fire extinguisher Is located and howto know where the fire extinguisher is located and howto operate it.
A plan should be implementable by the weakest link, which In your case could be your nine year old. Which basically means he should be able to reach the escape equipment kept on the top shelf in the attic. It could be as simple as a decision to run a neighbors house from one side of the house, in case it is being intruded from another side.
Just the fact that your wife and children know that if they hear a very suspicious noise from the north side of the hear a very suspicious noise from the north side of the house, they are to immediately evacuate from the we to the neighbors house, is a great source of confidence to them as well as you. Make this a fun process go over the situation with them on a Sunday as a game, to retain Interest. The kids will be thrilled.
Apartment Security
Any multi-family building can contain perils, whether it be an apartment building, coop, or condo facility. Identifying safety hazards should be the job of everyone living in the building, as well as the property manager and/or owner of the building. The following checklist of common safety hazards can be implemented by both resident or manager. It takes a cooperative effort by the tenant and the owner to create a safe living environment in an apartment building.
1) Blocked exits. The most commonly occurring safety hazard in an apartment building are blocked or obstructed exit pathways. Exits are not limited to doors, but also the windows In bedrooms. Be sure there is a clear path, without any hazards that could cause a trip or slip, especially to doors and stairwells. Be sure doors to all stairwells openly freely and are not obstructed. The only acceptable items that can be stored in stairwells are fire extinguishers and hoses, which are hung on the walls out of the path of travel.
2) Inoperable smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. Smoke detectors are one of the most ubiquitous — and ignored — safety devices in apartment buildings. Carbon monoxide detectors are slowly becoming required in states across the country in multi-family buildings which use a combustion source such as natural gas for heating, or which have living areas over garages. All such detection devices have living areas over garages. All such detection devices have a battery, either as their primary power source or in newer buildings.
.