While you’re preparing for the year-end break, booking the dogs into the kennels and cancelling the newspapers, check your physical security at home too. Sort out any weak points before you leave to help avoid house breaking while you’re away.
Inspect your expanding gates and burglar bars
Expanding gates and burglar bars, like anything else in your home, are subject to general wear and tear over the course of a year. At the coast the danger is rust, while inland it may be extremely dry conditions that affect the smooth working of your physical barriers. Check them all and give them a good clean according to your supplier’s instructions.
You can find handy cleaning tips for your Trellidor expanding gates, burglar bars, clear security bars, roller shutter doors or screens for windows and doors on the Trellidor website.
If any of your expanding gates or burglar bars need repair, call in your local Trellidor franchise to do this for you. While they’re at your home, get them to give you advice on any weak points that you’ve failed to notice and ask their advice on how best to secure the openings that are vulnerable to house robbers.
Automation needs back up
We often forget that many security measures are dependent on electricity or batteries, both of which can fail. Motion sensor beams, panic buttons and smoke alarms have batteries that should be checked and replaced before you go away.
Systems that run on electricity such as the burglar alarm, automated roller shutter doors, driveway gates and garage doors should all have battery back-up systems, which need to be checked to ensure they’re still working.
Sometimes house robbers will deliberately switch off your electricity at the box outside your home and wait for all your systems to run down so that they can break in without alerting the neighbours. Battery back-up is designed to keep your security systems going when this happens if you maintain them properly.
Install physical barriers on all openings
If in spite of all your checks and repairs, robbers still manage to get to your house, the best way of stopping them from getting inside is to have physical barriers on every opening. This includes burglar bars on all windows and expanding or other types of security gate on all doorways.
Good quality barriers that are difficult to break through are frustrating for house robbers as they take time, effort, the right tools and lots of noise. In that time, neighbours could be alerted or your security patrol may spot them. They may also decide that the effort is just not worth it.
Poor quality security gates and burglar bars are much easier and quicker to break through, so try to install the best quality you can afford. All Trellidor Retractable security gates are excellent quality but vary in terms of strengthening features and therefore differ in terms of cost. The security risk profile of the opening you need to secure as well as your budget will dictate which product your Trellidor franchise recommends.
Take a look at the differences in strength between different Trellidor Retractable expanding security gates on our website.
Lock up and go
Before you leave for your holiday, remember to do a full security check of your home:
- Put away anything at all that robbers might use to get into your home, like garden tools.
- See that all security gates and windows are closed and locked, including your internal safe room expanding gate.
- Ensure that all your windows and doors are also closed and locked.
- Check that no keys are lying around for house robbers to use.
- Set your alarm.
- Watch your driveway gate close behind you properly before you leave.
You’ve now done all you can to keep your home safe from house robbers, so relax and enjoy the holidays!
