Home Security tips

Lighting Up for the Burglars

Is it worth having a motion-sensor light attached to your property, knowing that its presence will keep waking you up? Sitting bolt upright in bed and wondering what woke you up can be a scary experience!

It may take a second or two before you realize that the unexpected light in your bedroom has made you aware that the sensory light has been triggered. You sit there in the dark and listen for a sound that will confirm that there is a burglar outside your door! Inevitably you hear a cat skitter across the roof of your car and realize that Kitty has woken you again.

What is the solution to security in your home? The brain will eventually formulate itself to sleep through a bright light that keeps coming on. This formulation only happens when it is regular and habitual; it does not happen for a light that only comes on at random.

Are there more convenient ways to protect your home? Every year in every area, burglaries are rife. The process of breaking and entering will only take sixty seconds. These figures are from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Sixty seconds sounds like an extremely quick ‘break and entry’ routine and raises the question: are we each doing enough to deter a burglar in the first place? There are two thousand burglaries a month (or attempts at forcible house-entry) in the Chicago area alone, according to the Chicago Police Department.

One of the recommended deterrents from the FBI is rather strange: keep a tidy front yard. The theory is that a neatly trimmed front lawn and clipped hedges will show that yours is a household that is not empty of residents, and also a household that pays attention to detail. The conclusion to this way of thinking is that therefore you will have thoroughly locked up your home!

On the subject of locks, if you have more than one lock, your house could be deemed to be a nuisance by a burglar. Dead locks are great and can be seen from the outside of the house.

A chain lock cannot be seen from the outside of the house, but it will make a noise and be difficult to remove – maybe impossible. Certainly it will wreck the sixty second routine.

Double glazed windows and doors are harder to smash, but if yours are single pane, be sure to keep them locked. Some people even drop a small splint of wood behind the latch of sliding windows, as a safety measure.

Install one of the many alarm systems on the market. Make sure everyone in the home knows how to operate it, so that the neighbors do not get used to hearing it.

Finally we are back where we started – the lighting. Well, I have to report that outdoor lighting is recommended as a strong deterrent. Burglars do not like to be spotlighted in your yard!

You could use a light that stays on all the time, although it has to be high up, so that it cannot be reached – and unscrewed. If you use a sensory light, can you add a blind or drapes in your bedroom to conceal the light from your eyes?

Another recommendation is that you keep some of the lights on in your home all night. A burglar will not be so keen to try and rob a well-lit home, just in case the owner is still up and about.

Closing the living room drapes may help. This way, it is impossible for a burglar to see if the home owner has actually fallen asleep on the sofa or not! Just the possibility of being confronted may be enough to stop someone burgling your home.

About the Author

Joe Pinto, one of the top-producing agents in the Chicago real estate industry. With over 10 years of experience, Joe brings professionalism and hard work to help you in the sale or purchase of Lincoln Park condos. For more information, visit Joe at ChicagoHomeEstates.com.

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