Best Home Security Tips & Tricks

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Here we are going to discuss some different tips and tricks about home security.

A lot of these security measures are very passive. You don’t even necessarily have to be a gun owner to even take advantage of some of these security things we’re going to talk about.

Securing your home can be done in a lot of very simple ways. A lot of these things are relatively cheap to employ. Not to mention that they will really increase the overall security of your home.

Let’s face it.

People break in houses. You need peace of mind when you’re away from your home.

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There’s a lot of really simple things we’re going to talk about here. I think you’ll be very surprised at how many of you are guilty of these things that we’re gonna discuss.

When we’re talking about home security, we want to keep people from ever even targeting your home.

The way that you do that is being smart and making little lifestyle changes to make sure that your house doesn’t become a target.

If you have a real unkempt yard, for instance, and stuffs falling off the house, it looks like somebody’s not taking care of it, typically that communicates to a bad guy that this is a place that doesn’t have heightened security, you’re less likely to have alarm system that’s wired into police.

Cut your yard, clean up the clutter around your house. That’s something that can be really good.

Another thing is close your blinds at night. That’s a huge one.

If you follow the criminal planning cycle, it’s always select a target, and people select targets that are easier targets. They are lazy, they want easy target. A low-risk high-reward is generally what they’re after.

So the very first thing is they’ve selected target.

The second thing is they gather intelligence. This is true from all the way up to the white-collar crime, all the way down to just a common pickpocket. Everyone selects the target and gathers intelligence.

One really easy way to gather intelligence is you just stand out in the darkness and you stare in a house and the blinds are open. In not a lot of time at allm you can figure out exactly who’s there and where their vulnerabilities are and they won’t see you in the cover of darkness.

Other things include having dogs and security lighting, which is different than decorative lighting. Decorative lighting will point toward the house as if to display your house on a silver platter. You want lights that go out. Motion sensors are a really good thing.

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Signage that says this home is protected by XYZ security system. All that stuff is really good.

So step one is to make sure that bad guys look at your house and be like no thanks, not going to try there, I’ll pick somewhere else.

Layers of security is the biggest thing!

You want to create layers of security.

If you have a long driveway that separates your home from the main road, having gates that open and close, gates that have locks on them, anything that can create a barrier between you and a potential thief is always a good thing.

Windows, for example. Have grading that is bolted on to the framework over the windows. As well as physical bars that are put over the frames of the windows. That’s two layers of security.

Some people even go as far as to add windows that can’t even break in your home. They make these windows that are super tough. You can throw a brick at it and it still won’t break.

I personally don’t like to keep that crazy of a scenario because I do want to be able to get out of my house if I need to.

You want to create an instance where they are so inconvenienced by trying to get in that they’re going to be killing valuable time that they need to get in, and they’re going to be deterred and they’re just not going to want to do it.

Even if you don’t have a security system, put a sign out in the yard anyway that says you do. Even if you don’t. Because it creates an impression that you have a security system.

Even if you don’t have a dog, still put a beware of dog sign out in your yard and your driveway. Because it’ll make them realize there’s probably a dog there, even if there’s not.

So it’s about creating layers of security that will buy you time.

Having cameras outside your home is certainly important, especially if you have a feed that can go to your cell phone and see what’s going on at the house even when you’re away from home.

Let’s go over more things as we get more inside the house.

So we talked about the layers of security that exist outside of your home. Whether it’s a deterrent or just a barrier that stops them from gaining access to the property.

Let’s say they’ve gained access to the property, now they want to get in your house, what are some simple things you can do to keep them out.

The very first thing is don’t be a target in the first place. Prevent them from ever even picking you. That’s the best stuff you could do in terms of home security.

The other thing is early warning and you can accomplish that with dogs, cameras, motion activated lights.

The worst thing you could possibly think of is the scenario of somebody standing over your bed ready to do something terrible to you.

That brings you to what happens if the first two levels have failed. They’re actually coming through a window or they’re coming through a door.

How do you prevent them from getting in the house in the first place?

There’s a lot of ways that that can be accomplished.

Probably one of the cheapest ways you can do it is with the screws that come with your door jamb and your hinges or your strike plates that come with your door hardware.

They usually come with little screws. They are very tiny screws, they don’t have a lot of meat and the power that this screw has in terms of the amount of weight it can hold is probably next to nothing.

See The Best Front Door Security Devices That Stop Kick-ins!

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One thing you can do is pre-drill your holes and take some of the long deck screws that have Torx heads. They will give you a lot more power to hold the door in there.

You’re going from a little teeny tiny screw to a big deck screw. Each of these deck screws is rated for about 45 pounds. So that’s pretty good bit of force required to knock the door in.

The weak point won’t be the screw, it’ll actually be a weak piece of trim on either side. If you’re not gonna replace all the screws, you’ve got to put deck screws in to where the deadbolt goes into the trim.

Because what happens is the deadbolt will actually be quite fine, it’s not gonna break, but what it’ll do is when they kick door is that deadbolt just blasts this tiny little piece of trim out.

By taking those two screws and going through these different studs all the way deep into the wall, that can buy you maybe a couple extra kicks.

But you can do a lot in those couple seconds. That loud kick could wake up the dog, it could wake you up, give you a little bit of extra time.

If you want your door even more secured, you can use the Nightlock. One kick plate goes into the floor and the other plate slides through. It’s really quick and easy. Even a five year old boy can do it.

You cannot kick these doors open. SWAT teams, when they encounter a Nightlock, that usually means they have to saw the door in half and fold it over. They can’t kick those open.

From making these layers and a few little improvements, bad guys have got to be pretty determined to get through all of this stuff.

Let’s talk a little bit about home security systems.

There are different alarms that you can get. They have sensors that can go on the door and can detect if the doors even been kicked and the alarm will go off, even just from the door being kicked because it is a sensor that senses a kick.

A lot of times what intruders do is they’ll come up your house and they’ll do a press. They’ll turn the knob and they’ll push the door to see if it will open or not. If it opens, they’ll just come in. They’re not gonna just kick it open and say here I am. They’re gonna try to just do a little push. But even if it’s just a push, this alarm will go off.

We strongly recommend having those door kick sensors put on.

You can also have a glass break sensor in every room. That’s important because if there’s a break through the window, the alarm is immediately going to go off, just from a brick being thrown through the window.

Motion sensors are also really good. It’s kind of a fail-safe. Those are set up in all the common areas and intersections within your hallways and whatnot.

Again layers of security. You can never have enough redundancies when it comes to home security.

Most people think that home invasions happen between midnight and 3:00 in the morning. But statistically that’s not the case.

Some of them happen during the middle of the day when they believe that everybody’s off at work. When they’re after your stuff, the middle of the day is when most home invasions occur.

So keeping doors locked in the middle of the day is a really important thing. You can have all the gizmos and gadgets, but if you don’t have good habits, it’s a false sense of security.

Whenever our doors are closed, day or night, they are locked. So every time you come inside, lock the door.

Anytime you leave the house, the alarm is on. Any time you’re in for the night, Nightlock on, home security system on.

It’s less about the gadgets or the gadgetry. It’s not going to help you, if you’re not actually having a lifestyle with good habits that uses them.

See Best Home Safety Products and Devices

Best Home Security Tips & Tricks
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