What else can you do to make your home safer on the outside?

Walk around your home on a regular basis to make sure you have made it safe. Use your imagination and remember to think like a thief.

You want to make sure you leave as few things laying around the outside of your home.

• Make sure toys are picked up from your lawn each day. Bad guys look for signs of children, so remove the toys, bicycles etc. when they are not in use.
• Look for objects that could make it easy for a bad guy to break a window. Do your best to remove bricks, rocks etc that will make it easy for a guy to break out a window.
• Remove any ladders that will give a thief easy entry to windows that are off of the ground.

Secure the area!

• Make sure your fence is secure. Consider locking your gate with a weatherproof lock.
• Lock all sheds and outbuildings.
• You also want to consider chaining anything that is valuable. Thieves will steal nice things in your yard like an outside grill and outside furniture. You should either chain them or move them to a safe place after you use them and wait to store your grill till after it has cooled off.

• Are all exterior doors leading to your pool area equipped with a specific door alarm that alerts you when someone has entered?
• If your pool area has a secondary fence, are the gates secured with a gate lock or auxiliary padlock?
• Is your pool area or property line surrounded by at least a 6 foot high fence?
• Is every member of your household trained in CPR?

Outside Lighting

• All exterior doorways should be well lit.
• Have lighting along the driveway and sidewalks controlled by photocells.
• Have flood lights with motion activated switches cover your yard.

Next month we will move to your home’s interior.

Here is the 3rd Issue explaining how to make the exterior of your home more secure.

Please review the past 2 issues, so you know what you will need while you are walking around your home.

Time to make sure your sliding doors are secure.

• Sometimes sliding glass doors are installed incorrectly. Because the doors are designed to be removed from the inside for maintenance, if the door is installed backwards, that means the door can be removed from the outside instead of the inside. Make sure it is installed correctly and the sliding part is on the inside of the house.
• As doors age, the rollers and the locks wear. If they are worn, they can be pried open much easier. Check to make sure the door doesn’t have much play in the track and also the lock is as secure as it was when it was new.
• No matter how secure a sliding glass door is, their locks are not as strong as a conventional door’s locks. Because of this, you need to make sure at the very least there is a rod in the track to prevent the door from being opened whether the lock isn’t working properly or isn’t in the locked position. The bar needs to be snug fitting. A better solution is to install a professionally designed sliding glass door Jamb Bar. Another solution is to use track locks. You should be able to find professional sliding glass door locking devices in a hardware store.

• Since sliding glass doors are mostly just big plates of glass, they can be broken and give a big entryway for a thief. You should have a burglar alarm and there should be a Glass Break device positioned in front of the sliding glass door.

Let’s look at your shrubs.

• If used as a security device, your home’s shrubs can be a great way to make it more difficult for thieves. If not maintained, shrubs can be your worse enemy.
• Make sure trees are cut back so someone can’t access upstairs windows easily.
• Make sure shrubs are trimmed so they don’t provide cover for a thief.
• Plant shrubs with thorns near windows. Your goal is to make it as difficult for the bad guys to hide around your home and to gain entry into your home.

Next month I will try to finish the outside and move on to the inside.

It is time to get serious about your home’s safety and look for security weaknesses around your home.

Walk around your home and use a checklist that includes the items below.

Start at your front door and go around your home clockwise. You will need a pad, pen and a friend to do your walk. You need to look at everything on the outside of your home and property. I am going to list things you need to review for each feature of your home. Because each home is different, no list can be complete. I have created the list below from different checklists that were created by Police Departments around the country. Use your imagination as you look, so you can find all of your property’s weaknesses. Let’s start with the doors.

• Does the door have glass in it or glass near it? If it isn’t safety glass, install safety glass film on the windows. The film will slow down a robber because the glass won’t shatter and leave a big whole through which the thief can enter.
• Is the door snug in the frame. The door needs to fit tight to the frame for strength.
• Do you have a deadbolt on your home’s outside doors? Make sure the door’s deadbold has at least a 1″ throw with a strong plate and 3″ screws to add strength. You can also make the frame stronger by putting metal along the frame behind the door molding.
• The door also needs to be solid. If your door doesn’t provide the protection you need, either strengthen it yourself or hire someone who is a professional.

• If you have children, you need to make it impossible for someone to know where they are in your home. If the room is a child’s room, can you tell it is a child’s room from the outside? Remove anything that gives it away.
• Can you see children’s drapes? Put shades to block the view of the drapes
• Are there any fire stickers on the windows? Remove them because they tell the bad guys where your children are.
• Are your windows secure and locked? Always keep them locked if possible.
• To add safety to your windows, you should install either window pins or double head nails, so part of the nail sticks out to keep the window passing above the nail. If the thief can’t open the window enough to crawl through, they will be forced to look for another entrance or break the window and make a lot of noise.

In the coming months we will cover sliding glass doors, shrubs and the general safety of your home’s exterior.

At least twice a year you should do a security check. Walk around your home with a friend. Your friend will probably see things that you may miss because they aren’t familiar with your home. Of course you should do a walk around with your friend at their home as well.

Start off with your home’s exterior . You want to secure your home, so it is safe while you are at home and while you are away. Of course one of the best things you can do is have a monitored burglar alarm system and use it when you are away from your home and when you are home – even in the daytime.

You should be on the lookout for many things. While you walk, bring with you a list things to check and also take notes as you walk. Remember, you and your friend should think like a thief as you are walking around your home.

• Is your yard well lit?
• Are there places for thieves to hide?
• Are your doors secure, including your garage door and sliding doors?
• Are your windows secure?
• If you aren’t home, is it obvious?
• If you have a fence, is it secured?
• Are there signs to deter a thief like security alarm sign or neighborhood watch sign?
• Are there trees or anything else that helps thieves get to a second floor. Is there a ladder left outside?
• Are your doors locked – now?

In the coming months we will cover the things you should look for in more detail.