Good quality burglar bars on all windows in your home can save you from a robbery in several ways. With home robbery increasingly becoming a concern for many people, whether they live in an apartment, a free-standing home, or a gated community, burglar bars can be just as important as security gates in doors in providing you with protection and peace of mind.
So how do burglar bars on all your windows help keep you safe? Here are seven ways they do this:
- Stop criminals from getting in through hidden windows
Properties with hidden areas that are not visible to any neighbours are perfect for robbers. Thieves can climb in through unprotected windows and help themselves to your precious possessions without being seen. Properties like these may have a lake, forest, vacant land, high walls, or unoccupied houses bordering them. In all these situations, robbers are hidden from view while they try to break in. Stop them from trying by making sure that all the windows on this side are covered with good burglar bars.
- Block robbers from climbing in through a broken window
If doors are closed and locked, the next best route into your home for robbers is an open or broken window. They will use tools they bring with them or anything they find lying around your yard to break the window glass if the window is closed. After that, it is quick and easy to get their hand inside, unlatch the window and slide into the house. Tidy up tools, toys, ladders, or anything else that robbers might find useful and fit burglar proofing to windows so that you can safely leave them open for fresh air. And, of course, replace those broken windows.
- Make it difficult for them to slide in through upstairs windows
Windows on the first floor of a building are not safe from burglars. An apartment on the first floor is just as vulnerable to robbery as one on the ground floor. The same applies to the upstairs levels of a free-standing house. Robbers will always be able to find some way of getting up to this level to get inside through an open window. So for your own peace of mind, fit burglar bars to higher up windows and don’t get caught by surprise.
- Prevent them from trying the windows if all doors are locked
Burglars often watch your home for a while to find its weak points so that they can get in as easily as possible. If you have security gates on your exit doors, and you keep them closed and locked even when the doors are open, burglars will check how well protected the windows are as an alternative entry point. Even small windows are no deterrent. If they can’t get in through the window themselves, they will bring someone else along that is small enough to slide inside. Use burglar guards on windows to keep them out.
- Secure weak points like skylights
Skylights, even when they’re the fixed type that can’t be opened, are a weak point that burglars can exploit. Once on the roof, housebreakers can work on opening the skylights to get inside your home. They will then use a door to make their escape once they have what they came for. Burglar proofing can be fitted to skylights to ensure that robbers can’t use them to get inside your home.
- Make it harder to break in undetected
Burglar bars on windows force robbers to use tools to try and break in. This makes a lot of noise and will raise suspicion, which is exactly what they don’t want. The noise may alert you if you’re home. Or your neighbours may hear it and call the police or neighbourhood watch. Either way, it is risky for robbers, who prefer a home without the bother of burglar bars that have to be removed. Just carrying the necessary tools around at night looks suspect if they’re stopped by police. These are all good reasons to have burglar bars installed on all your windows.
- Less likely to target homes with burglar bars
Not all robberies are opportunistic. In many cases the robbers have watched your home for a period of time to see how easy it is to break into. They note the movement of the people that live there; what their daily patterns are; and what sort of obstacles there are to breaking inside. If all your doors are secured with gates or security doors and all your windows have burglar proofing on them, your home is less likely to be targeted, especially if there are easier homes in the area to break into.
Burglar bars that open provide an escape route in an emergency
When purchasing burglar bars for your windows, it is extremely important to take this one safety precaution: make sure that you have some burglar bars that can be opened in an emergency.
Emergencies like a fire inside your home or a violent home invasion could force you to lock yourself in a fully burglar guarded room. If you can’t open the burglar bars, you may not be able to get out. To avoid a tragedy, at least one window in each room should have burglar bars that can open as an emergency escape route.
Here are some Trellidor burglar bars that open:
- Trellidor Retractable
These are security gates that can be fitted to windows too. They have a lock that can be opened so that the burglar bars can slide open.
- Trellidor Clear Guard
These are see-through security screens that are fitted with locks and opened in an emergency. They are available in different formats such as hinged, awning, sash or sliding screens.
- Trellidor louvre shutters
These are aluminium burglar bars in the form of louvre shutters that lock when closed. The louvres can be tilted to allow in fresh air and light but keep the shutter unit locked to keep robbers out.
Get a quote on different types of burglar bars from your nearest Trellidor outlet before deciding on which style suits your home and budget best.
