Many homeowners spend a small fortune protecting their house but forget that it’s just as vital to restrict the access to your home. Outside fences and hedges must always be checked in order to prevent thieves gaining entry to your property.
Making your property secure
No one is suggesting that you barricade your house, but a few useful precautions will give you, and your insurers, peace of mind. If you live in the UK roller shutters from Security Direct are a great idea. These can be installed on the doors and windows of your house as well as your shed and garage.
Think like a thief
The Metropolitan Police website suggests that you look at your shed and any other outbuildings and ‘consider how you would break in.’ If you haven’t installed roller shutters to protect the doors and windows, then you must invest in a strong padlock that’s difficult to shear off your shed’s door. Ensure that your shed windows have secure window locks.
Create light
Thieves love the dark, so fix lights to the outside of all of your buildings. You can set timers to ensure that the buildings are illuminated during the darker hours.
Parts of your garden may provide wonderful shadows for a thief to camouflage themselves, fix motion sensor lights to your property. These will come on the moment someone sets foot on your land and make it very difficult for anyone to hide from their glare.
Unfortunately these lights won’t distinguish between foxes, cats and humans, so don’t be alarmed if the lights do come on in the middle of the night. Check that the activity is human rather than animal related before you contact the local police, as you’d feel pretty silly if the source of your alarm is a fox or a friendly tabby rather than a human intruder.
Prickly hedges can help
A useful back up to a perimeter fence is a prickly hedge. Holly is ideal, as is berberis or rose. An article in The Daily Mirror also suggests that you ensure that your garden gates can be padlocked. You could opt for electronically controlled gates, but these can prove costly. If you want to deny intruders access to your property you could also fix a trellis on top of your fence – this will make it far harder for someone try and climb over the fence.
Check your insurance policy
Many homeowners don’t always read the small print of their home insurance contents policies. Make sure that you include garden furniture, and also be very specific about any other goods you might want to insure. For example, ‘a bike might only be insured while it’s in your garden if it’s secured to an immovable object.’ If in any doubt ask your insurer when renewing your policy.
As long as you have sufficient protection on the outside of your property, and criminals can’t gain access to your home through the garden, you can be confident that you have done the best you can to protect your home and your family.