If you truly want to be safe in your home, a basic security system is generally not enough. Instead, you need a comprehensive approach to home security that addresses all of your threats. Here are five essentials that should be a part of that.
The role of any security system is to keep your home safe from burglaries. Annually, one in every thirty-six homes gets broken into, and on average, thieves take just over $2,000 worth of personal belongings. If you live in a high crime area, your risk of facing a burglary is even higher. To protect your home against burglary, you need a security system that monitors all of your entrances. Too often basic systems only come with sensors for one or possibly two doors. To be safe, you need a sensor for every single door in your home. That includes doors in your garage and the door leading from your garage into your home.
The door sensors mentioned above work on a simple principal. There are two sensors, one attached to the door and one attached to the door frame. When the door is closed, there's a magnetic field between the two sensors, but when a thief or intruder opens the door, this field is broken and that sets off the alarm.
Ideally, however, you don't even want to get to that point, and to avoid that, your home needs forced entry protection. That way thieves can try to break in, but they won't be able to breach your home.
To reduce forced entry, you may want to upgrade your doors. Security steel and even solid wood are both much stronger than hollow core doors. Additionally, you may want to reinforce your door frames and even upgrade your locks.
If someone gets into your home, they generally want to take whatever they can get as quickly as possible. Ideally, they want to grab their loot and get out of there before the police arrive. If they are successful, you will probably never find out who robbed your home.
However, if you have video surveillance, that increases your chances of finding the perpetrator. If you're committed to justice, you may want video surveillance. This is also a great way to keep an eye on who's outside your home, and you can even set up video "doorbells".
Thieves and intruders aren't the only threat you need to consider when securing your home. Annually, there are approximately 365,500 home fires in the United States. That's just over 1,000 per day.
A generation ago, you had about 17 minutes to escape safely from your home after a fire started, but now, furnishings tend to burn faster and you have about three to four minutes to get out.
Due to that heightened risk, you need a fire detector that can alert you sooner. Most standard alarms only sense smoke. They do not sense smoldering fires. To protect yourself, you need an ionized fire detector that can sense the gasses emitted from smoldering fires.
Finally, you may also want help if you're facing a medical emergency. This is especially important for elders who live on their own or people who are prone to certain health issues. With an emergency medical monitoring system, you hit an alert system if you are in distress.
Then, the system sends a message to a monitoring station, and the reps at the monitoring station dispatch emergency medical service professionals to your home. This can be a lifesaver in many situation.
Defending and protecting your family and your home is extremely important. Unfortunately, in most cases, a simple security system just isn't strong enough. At
All Pro Security, Inc., we offer all of the above solutions, and we can help you craft a system that will truly protect you.
