Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Enjoy and Protect Your Urban Home with these Simple Safety Tips

The metropolitan lifestyle is exciting for many people: the proximity to entertainment, accessibility to work, and a feeling of being part of the action are all great reasons to move into the city. Unfortunately, these trendy areas often fall prey to crime, and the rates of burglaries and vandalism in metropolitan areas seems to escalate daily. This trend is expected to continue as the economy worsens. Protecting your home and family from burglary and theft can be easy and affordable. A great first step is to look at your home through a burglar’s eyes and find the weakest security points.

Doors and windows are often the easiest points of access for criminals, and though it may seem obvious simply locking your doors and windows is the most affordable means of home security. Sadly, many people simply become complacent and forget to lock up before bed or leaving the house for a night on the town.

Doors - Your doors will stand up to most breach attempts if they are made from solid wood or metal rather than a hollow core. Install 3.5 inch long steel screws to fasten the door to the frame for maximum protection.

Windows
- The glass in windows and doors is often the easiest way a thief can gain access to your home: statistically upwards of 80 percent of all break-ins occur through a door or window. Security window films are affordable, and can provide an extra layer of defense from thieves attempting to smash a window to gain access to the home. While a burglar may be able to muster enough force to eventually smash the window, the repeated attempts require a lot of attention-grabbing blows. ShatterGARD, Inc. is one of the largest privately held glass protection and security product companies in the United States. ShatterGUARD products are trusted to protect the men and women of the U.S. military and law enforcement communities, as well as facilities associated with the worldwide banking and telecommunications industries, and private residences. For more information on how to protect your business or home against break-ins, home invasions, or hurricane winds, visit Shatterguard,at www.ShatterGARD .com.

Landscaping
- Finally, it’s important to assess the visibility of doors and windows from the
road since quite often people inadvertently obstruct these areas of their home in landscaping. Unfortunately even though trees and shrubs (even in planters on your front step) look beautiful, they often provide cover for thieves wanting to stealthily gain access to your home. Appropriate landscaping can actually help deter intruders, and can still look beautiful.
• Keep trees, bushes, and planters back from the house and windows. This will help diminish the likelihood of an intruder using the shrubs as cover. Tree limbs should also be trimmed, to prevent an intruder from using a tree to access a second story entry point.
• Planting low-growing sharp or thorny bushes such as holly, rose shrub, or barberry under windows, or adding gravel or landscape rock which makes for noisy footing, are also good ways to deter thieves from attempting to gain access to windows.
• Garages are favorite targets for thieves, not only because they are often unoccupied, but because they often offer a direct and unlocked entry to the remainder of the home. A few simple countermeasures, such as keeping doors closed and locked and regularly changing codes on door openers can help greatly deter an intruder’s ability to access the garage.

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