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With the seasons changing, many people are getting ready to start spring cleaning. While cleaning out your home is a great idea, you may also want to consider adding a home safety checklist to your spring cleaning routine.
Home Safety Checklist Audit Overview:
The weather is starting to improve, so this is the perfect time to do many of these tasks and to implement some alarm systems best practices. In this article, you are going to learn some of the steps you can take to make sure your apartment is secure this Spring. Let us learn more with the following home security tips:
Home Security Tips to Keep Your Home and Family Safe
- Check Your Locks
- How To Inspect Your Windows?
- Can You See Visitors?
- Assess Your Home Exterior
- Security Best Practices When You Are Not At Home
- Manage Your Spare Keys
- How to Inspect and Maintain Your Security System
- Upgrade an Existing Basic Home Security System
01. Check Your Locks
Doors are the most common point of entry for intruders. To make sure your apartment or house is secure, you should go to every exterior door to inspect the locks. Beyond checking to make sure the doors lock correctly, you also want to consider the quality of the locks. Every exterior door should have a deadbolt, and while you are at the doors, you should check them for the proper thickness and make sure they fit securely in the frame.
If there are any issues with the locks on your exterior doors, you should call a locksmith to have them replaced. If you have a sliding glass doorway at your house, you also want to check to make sure it is secure. Beyond the simple lock on the door, you may want to consider a secondary lock that prevents sliding doors from being forced open.
02. Inspect Your Windows
Both doors and windows can be vulnerabilities when assessing your alarm system. After you check the locks at all of the exterior doors, you should then go to test the safety at your windows. Lock all of the windows and make sure they cannot be forced open. If any of your window locks have problems, you can buy secondary bolts to install on your own.
When checking your windows, you want to make sure to test both the first floor and second-floor windows. Just because a window is on the second floor, that does not mean that it is inaccessible. Most burglars will prefer a first-floor window, but they can be pretty inventive when looking for ways to access insecure windows on the second floor.
03. Can You See Visitors?
An inability to see who is at your front door should be a significant safety concern. If you cannot see who is there or verify their identity, this could be a way for a criminal to gain entrance to the house. Most front doors should come with a peephole. If yours does not have one, you should have it installed.
As a high-tech solution to this issue, you could consider installing a device like the SkyBell doorbell camera. With this device, you have a camera that watches your front door for you. It records HD video when any person approaches the front door, and you can view the video in real-time to verify the identity of visitors. It also has two-way audio so you can talk to the person on the other side of the door.
04. Assess Your Home Exterior
The next step in your home safety assessment should be to walk the exterior of your home. Start by going out to the street to see if you can see the front door. Then walk the property to look at your windows to see if they are visible. If bushes or shrubs obscure the view of any door or window, you should consider trimming them down.
While you are walking the property, you should look to see which areas have poor lighting at night. Dark areas on the side or back of the house can make your residence a more inviting target to criminals. If you identify any areas that are poorly lit, you should consider having exterior lights installed. Motion lights can be particularly beneficial because they only light up in response to something moving in the predetermined area.
05. Security Best Practices for Spring Vacation
If you plan to go vacation during spring, there are some things you will require to do to make sure your home stays secure while you are away. Your first step should be to go to the post office to arrange for a whole on any incoming mail. If you have a newspaper subscription, you should also have that put on hold while you are out of town.
As another step to protect your home while you are away on vacation, you should be cautious about what you write on social media. Don’t broadcast your plans to everyone on the internet, and be careful about what you share while you are away. You might want to post all of your vacation photos in real-time, but this can be a signal to criminals that your house is empty. Instead of displaying the pictures while you are away, wait until you get home and post them all at once.
06. Spare Key Management
Wanting to have access to a spare key is understandable –nobody wants to get locked out of their house. That said, you need to be careful about what you do with your extra keys. If you are leaving a key outside, you are breaking one of the essential rules of alarm systems. Criminals know all of the most common hiding places for spare keys, and no matter how clever you think your spot is, there is a good chance that a burglar will think to look there.
Instead of hiding a key outside, you should give the spare to a trusted neighbor or family member. If you don’t want to trust anyone with the key, you could consider a keyless entry system. With keyless entry, you can have a keypad installed that allows you to open the door with a code. You could also consider smart locks. Smart locks offer keyless entry that can be locked or unlocked using your smartphone. They can also keep access to records and be programmed to send alerts to your phone.
07. Inspect Your Security System
Having an alarm system can be a great way to protect your home against criminals. If you have one, you should add a quick inspection to your spring cleaning routine. Most panels have a testing feature that allows you to test to make sure all the components are working. Notify your smart home wireless system provider that you are going to do some testing, and then check each piece to make sure it is working.
If you have cameras with your alarm system, you will also want to inspect the cameras and make sure they are aimed at the right place. If your alarm system includes wireless devices, you will also want to check to make sure all the wireless components have a good battery.
08. Consider Security System Upgrades
While you are inspecting and testing your home alarm system, it is also an excellent time to consider any upgrades you may want. You might feel like you need to add a motion detector to protect one of your rooms. You may also find that you want to upgrade one or more motion detectors to image sensors that can improve home protection alarm. If you have old cameras, you might want to consider upgrading to newer models that record in HD.
For homeowners that still have the older alarm systems with the simple keypad and panel, you might need to consider an upgrade to a smart alarm system. With the smart systems, you get improved security and a full range of features. Along with your standard security devices, you could install things like smart locks, smart lights, image sensors, fire prevention, and protection devices, and more.
Final Thoughts
Beyond using these home safety checklist or tips, contact Cornerstone Protection for all of your home security system needs. We install and maintain smart security systems for homes and businesses in Central Kentucky. You certainly want to do what you can to maintain a secure home all year round, but spring offers an excellent time to follow your home safety checklist.
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