We are now in the glorious, bright season of summer where we flee to the beach, cottage, take week long vacations and are constantly outside enjoying the warm outdoors.

Whether you are leaving your home for a short walk or a week long family vacation, there are certain measures to take to ensure the safety and security of your home and possessions. To help secure your Home this Summer, read the following articles to upgrade your security knowledge and learn how to make your Summer Vacation a worry free and relaxing time.

Beacons for Burglars ?
Basic Home Security Tips To Practice

Although most home security tips are based on simply common sense, it's easy to overlook beacons for burglars. Burglars prefer to choose the easy mark, so you want to do everything possible to make your house look undesirable and impossible for an easy theft to occur

Property on the Outdoors

• Landscape your property for visibility instead of privacy. Eliminate or trim trees and shrubs that could provide a hiding place for burglars or shelter their actions from the house/street.
• Keep the lawn mowed and the exterior of the house maintained (an overgrown appearance might suggest you are away from home a lot or that you just don't care enough to worry about your home).
• If an outdoor light burns out, change it promptly.
• Don't display valuables. When you make new purchases (such as a plasma TV), don't leave the boxes by the curb to announce your valuable acquisitions-break boxes down and hide them in your trash/recycling bin.
• Use locks on garages and storage sheds, and keep tools that could aid a burglar from gaining entry into your home inside and out of sight.
• Use outdoor lighting to keep all entrances to your house well lit (photosensitive lights go on automatically when night falls, or to conserve energy you can get motion detecting or heat sensing lights that go on when triggered). Again, the objective is to eliminate hiding places for burglars.

...more>>

[ top ]

Common Home Security Mistakes

Whether or not you have a home security system, there are some common mistakes you should watch for because they can make your house an easy mark for thieves. Browse through the following "no-no's" and make sure you are not guilty of committing any of them. (If you are, for your own safety and for the security of your home, correct them immediately.

Hide-a-Key:
Many homeowners, afraid they will lose their keys and lock themselves out, choose to hide a key somewhere on the property. They think they are being sneaky by placing the key under a rock, under a doormat, in a potted plant, or above the door. Burglars know about all these commonly used hiding places. Under no circumstances should you leave the key to your house where it can be found. If you frequently lose your keys or lock yourself out of the house, consider getting a fingerprint or keypad door lock for your front door

...more>>

[ top ]

Vacationing: 15 Tips for Home Security While Gone

Tip #1: Put your mail on hold or keep it out of site:
This is mostly for on the street mailboxes or apartment boxes. However, if you have a mail slot in your door you might also want to consider doing this if anyone can look through a window and see the mail stacking up.  A great number of modern decorative doors have windows that would allow someone to see collecting mail. You could have a trusted family member stop by every other day to pick up your mail and collect them until you return.

Tip #2: Answering machine message "we can't get to the phone right now":
Even when you're in town, your phone message should never say that you are not home. Set the machine to answer in five rings, answering too soon or too late indicate nobody at home. Five rings could be that you really can't get to the phone. In consolidated phone/answering machine models turn down the ringer.

...more>>

[ top ]

Downloadable Home
Security Checklist

Use this as a guide as you check your home for safty measures. Boxers marked "no" indicate areas where you could take action to improve your homes'security. These are justsome of the steps you can take to decrease the likelihood that you or your home is targeted.

Download pdf - size 85kb

[ top ]

Facts & Myths Concerning
Alarm Systems

How do you know a good alarm system when you see one? This is one question that many homeowners ask when they go in search of an alarm system for their home. How do you compare one company's alarm system against another when you don't know anything about alarm systems...more>>

[ top ]

In This Issue:
> Beacons for Burglars: Basic Home Security Tips
> Common Home Security Mistakes
> Vacationing: 15 Tips For When You're Gone
> Downloadable Home Security Checklist
> Facts and Myths Concerning Alarm Systems