When it comes to defending your home, you can never be too prepared. While the odds are good that nothing bad is going to happen to your home or family, it’s better to be safe than sorry. You need to be prepared before any attack and ready to respond afterward, as well.
Here are our top tips to keeping your home safe.
Step One: Locks and Barriers
You need to make sure your doors and windows are all locked up tight when you’re away or when you’re sleeping. If you live in a more dangerous area, you could opt for window grates that can be pulled down to protect your home from invasion. This ensures that your window is safer than the sheer toughness of the glass.
Another important aspect of protecting your home is limiting visibility of what’s inside. If you’ve got expensive game consoles on plain display, it might make your home a more promising place to burgle. Make sure you draw your curtains or turn your blinds so that outsiders can’t peer in, especially when you’re not home.
Step Two: Alarms
If you’re seriously concerned about intruders, you need to equip your home with an alarm system. For those who are worried about being burglarized when they’re away, an alarm system with monitoring from a respected security company is ideal. Cameras, motion sensors, and door contacts are common in these types of alarm systems.
Ideally, you want your alarm to result in a response. This is where the monitoring comes in: When you’re away from home and your alarm system kicks in, you want a call to the police to affect an immediate response. If you’re home, the sound of your alarm going off allows you time to call the police yourself and ready your personal defenses.
Step 3: Safe Rooms
Protecting your family or your valuables can be difficult. However, one easy way to do this is with a safe room. If you have an interior room away from windows that has a door, you can do a bit of home improvement to make it into a safe room for your valuables or your family.
A steel door on a steel frame with a heavy lock can make a room very discouraging to enter for burglars. Stashing your cash, jewels and other valuables here is a good idea, as is simply retreating to this room in the event of a burglary while you await the police response.