Secure your home now

You have heard the Mexican term “mi casa is su casa?” Some take it literally not just with your house but with your stuff. Home security has become a very large industry but most people know little about what to do about it. Secure your home now is our theme. Of course, you can call one of the national alarm services or even a local company but there is more to security than just the alarm. This article will focus on crime prevention. Keep the bad guys away at the start.

The most important thing is to protect your family then your property from someone who wants what you have. Secure your home now.

It’s ok to be a little paranoid

It’s ok to be a little paranoid thinking that other people may want what you have. Long before the more recent mass thefts at stores and the rioting in cities, I have believed that what’s mine is mine. Sorry for those of you who believe in spreading the wealth around. It’s one thing to give money to a case it’s another when the cause comes and takes your money and things. More important than things is the physical safety of you and your loved ones.

There is an article in this blog about home automation for seniors that I wrote some time ago. Please read it even if you are not a senior, you may have family that it will apply to. This blog goes a bit further on the topic of home security. Please indulge me in this article since I will be using my own experience securing many houses including my home and rental properties.

Learn by my mistakes and take advantage of the evolving technology. New inventions in the area of home security have been a godsend for those who could not afford an expensive monitoring system that does not check all of the boxes. As I mentioned and will get more into it later, a security system is just one part of an overall system for improving the quality of your life and that of your friends and family.

Relieve your anxiety

Should you live in an area with a higher crime rate than you are comfortable with, do something about it. You can move or secure your home and property. If you worry at night about someone breaking into your home or car, it’s time to take action. My experience has been that the cost of improving the security of my home and property was fairly low. Consider that most insurance companies offer discounts for security systems.

Those discounts however will usually not cover the cost of a monitoring system unless you use one of the low-cost options that I will mention here. Even using low-cost options at best you will break even using your lower insurance cost against the monitoring cost. I just wanted you to clearly understand this because there are some unscrupulous people out there who will tell you the monitoring cost is free after using your insurance deduction.

Even if you live in a “good” area with fairly low crime rates that does not mean that crime will not travel to your doorstep. We have seen that some of the criminal activity occurring in the cities is working its way to the suburbs. Once nearly crime-free communities are becoming victims. Regardless of your position on defunding the police or not, there are not enough police to completely protect you. At best they respond after the fact.

Focus on prevention

We need to focus on crime prevention. Since most of you are not police officers, you will not be involved in retrieving what was taken from your home. Let’s keep those bad people away from your home at the start. The sign in this section may work along with other things you can do to prevent crime. This article will go through some things you can do to prevent bad people from invading your personal property.

EXTERIOR

Lighting

Starting with lighting. Lots of crime happens in the shadows at night. There are a wide variety of wired and wireless solutions to lighting for your property. Before the advent of long-lasting batteries and solar panels, it was difficult to place lighting in your yard for lack of power. Now you can light your property like it’s daylight if you want to. You may want lights to stay on all night, dusk to dawn, or just use motion lights or both.

If you leave lights on all night, be sure to use LED lights to reduce your cost of electricity. When designing your lighting system, take into consideration your neighbors. Most neighbors will have no problems with motion lights which are off most of the time. If you have bright lights shining in bedroom windows all night you could have issues with your neighbors.

Work with your neighbors

A good idea is to work with your neighbors to encourage them to secure their property with lighting as well. If both sides and behind you are all security-aware you can spend less on your lighting. It’s good to think big, perhaps the whole neighborhood.

Wireless battery-operated lights with solar panels can keep the lights charged and much of the year they will stay on all night. You can put these on poles in your yard or high on a fence to fill in dark spaces. These lights come as dusk to dawn and/or motion only. The light below is one that I use on my motor home. They are inexpensive and you can put them around the yard since they are battery operated.

You can buy a wired light that has a camera and lights. This wifi device can replace your porch light or any light that has been mounted in a standard lightbox. I have a number of these made by Feit. Your cell phone manages alerts. You can talk through it and listen as well. It’s a great overall unit. This link to Amazon is one source.

Sound

The light that I discussed above comes with a speaker and microphone. You need to have the ability to communicate with the bad guys even if it’s only to tell them the police are on the way. There are different cameras with this capability, choose one or more that are loud enough.

Sirens are important as well. Once again, you can buy a single unit with all of these benefits. There are two ways to manage the siren. First, set it to come on if there is an intruder, or second set it to come on only when you turn it on. There may be times when you expect a neighbor to come over so you turn off the auto siren. You receive a notification and see through the camera that it is not your neighbor. Set it off at that time.

Lights and sirens are the first lines of defense. The majority of non-hearing impaired criminals will depart your property. For those few and some believe you are 100 miles away and will do nothing, they may proceed. At least you can slow them down by telling them the police are on the way and your neighbors are armed (not an actual suggestion but interesting). You can buy separate sirens for other more remote areas of your property. They can all come on at the same time.

INTERIOR

Intruder detection system

Some call this the base station or hub. There are a couple of popular intruder detection systems that you can use to set up the interior of your home. The older systems were entirely hard-wired, expensive, and required invasive drilling, etc. Now you open the box, peel, and stick. I have purchased the Simply Safe system for my office. The one that I bought came with a camera. We will get into that soon. The system pictured below should be adequate for most single-story homes.

You do not need to put a sensor on every door. The motion sensors can work in larger areas and take the place of window sensors. Put a sensor on each of your exterior doors.

There is another system which I installed on my motor home. This one is made by Ring. Either system should work for your needs and you can buy additional sensors for either system. I bought the Ring for my motor home because it has a flat hug that I could mount.

Both systems permit the use of your mobile phone to connect to them. Each uses a hub that must be plugged into an AC outlet and it will connect wirelessly to your WIFI hub. If you do not have wifi, you can plug the hub into the modem directly. You can use either system with Alexa for voice activation.

Interior Cameras

There are so many interior cameras on the market it’s hard to choose. If you have pets, you can tease them if you have cameras with speakers and microphones. You can also warn children to go to bed when they are away from the house. Of course, they are best used to record intruders. The interior cameras are unlikely to deter anyone since they are in the house.

We used cameras to supplement our interior and exterior security system. They also let us know what was going on when the alarm was disabled. A while back our neighbor would feed our cats so he could turn off the alarm. When we received the camera notification we could talk to him about how the cats were doing. You can speak to the babysitter etc.

The camera above is an example of an inexpensive unit that is wireless. I like the cube shape, you can place it anywhere. If you want multiples there is a package discount.

Electronic Entry

My favorite home security item is an electronic door lock. Ditch the keys. These locks are excellent for their flexibility. On occasion, our neighbor or a repair person requires access when we are away. I can open the lock remotely with my mobile phone. The lock keeps a log of entry and exit times as well. These locks are not more secure than a good deadbolt lock but they facilitate entry.

I have used several types of locks on rental properties. I like the Yale Assure Lock with a keyhole and the Kwikset Halo lock with a key. You can buy these locks without a key but there have been occasions when the batteries stop working at the worst time. Most of the locks work with Alexa or a general-purpose hub such as Smart Things. The Yale lock described below will open when I drive up and lock when I leave. Nice when your arms are full of groceries.

I like both the Kwikset Halo and the Yale Assure locks, they each have features the other does not have. The Yale seems to have longer battery life.

I put a less expensive push-button lock on the garage and back door. These permit us to push buttons to get in without a key. We don’t need the more expensive front door lock on the other doors. These locks can be with a key or not. The chances that all of your locks will fail at one time is pretty remote.

Insurance Claims

Insurance is for protection in extreme conditions. Every claim you make for any insurance will remain on your record and will affect the cost of future insurance. Claiming a break-in where valuables or property were taken and damage to the property was sustained is a last resort. In my opinion, insurance is for catastrophic events. If you have taken no steps after reading this article to secure your property and there is a break-in, consider covering the costs in your pocket.

Vehicles

Vehicles parked outside of a garage should be parked in a lighted area. Lock them at night and when you are away. Before we moved from California, the area we lived inexperienced a rash of people breaking into cars at night in a development. They were usually smashed and grabbed.

I spoiled one thief’s plans when I heard a noise from my second-floor window and looked out. I used my very high-power LED flashlight and yelled “Police”. He jumped in his car and ran away. My powerful garage lights went on and I could see him well.

I suggest that the lighting that you place around the exterior cover your vehicles as well.

Panic Button

Security systems include sirens and you can add sirens as well. Some have panic buttons you can buy. Panic buttons can work with Smartthings as well and work independently of the alarm system. You can place panic buttons around the house. In the case I mentioned above, I would have set off an exterior siren with a panic button had I set it up that way.

The panic button above claims to work with the SimpliSafe home security system described above. There are stand-alone panic buttons and sets that include a siren and panic buttons that are all wireless. Some work through a Smartthings hub or with Alexa. You could tell Alexa to set off a siren instead of pushing a button.

One last thing

There are social sites that work with neighborhoods. My neighborhood uses Facebook and another site. Your neighbors can share incidents with you and you with them. When neighbors experience porch pirates they can post warning others. Your neighborhood can set up a neighborhood watch as well. Contact your local law enforcement officials about how to set up a neighborhood watch and obtain signs.

Thank you for reading this article. I have placed some amazon products in the article for two reasons. First as an example of an item without getting trouble with copyrighted photos and second to cover a bit of the cost to maintain the blog. For those of you who do not understand how blogs work, let me explain. There are lots of software costs and hosting costs. We buy tools on a subscription basis to accomplish some things in the blog. All of this has a cost. Not to mention our time to give free information.

If you decide to acquire an item, click on it. Thanks again.