Unique Garage Surveillance Tips to Protect You and Your Home
In the event someone breaks into your home or into your garage, you typically have less than a minute to decide what to do. It’s vital to stay calm, cool and collected before making any decisions.
You need to think about everything that could happen:
• If you confront the intruder, you could put yourself in danger if he is violent or has a weapon.
• If you don’t do anything, you may not get a chance to give police an accurate description.
Throughout all of this, you must keep the safety of you and your family the top priority.
Spending a long time in the garage business, I’ve given clients some pretty unique tips to not only keep their garage secure, but also how to survey your intruder, without him and or her knowing what’s going on. This will allow you to give police an accurate description and put you out of the way of danger.
Hotel Peephole
Whenever someone knocks at your door at a hotel, you naturally look through the peephole on the door to see who it is. Why not do that with your garage?
Most garage doors have a door that leads into your house, so why not give yourself a cheap option to see what’s going on in your garage.
You can find a wide-angle (it’s important that it’s wide-angle so you can see everything that’s going on) peephole at most hardware stores. You simply drill a hole in your door the size of the peephole and screw it in.
Most doors inside garages don’t have peepholes, so intruders won’t think to look and cover it up.
Of course, you can run into the problem if it’s too dark to see anything. But if it’s too dark to see, your intruder is likely using a flashlight to see his way around. This should allow you to get a good look at his face.
Surveillance Cameras
Your next option is exploring surveillance cameras to install in your garage.
Surprisingly, you can find some affordable options that allow you to be pretty high-tech at the same time.
You really only need two cameras installed in opposite corners to get a good view of your garage. In fact, you can probably get away with just one, as long as your garage isn’t too big.
More sophisticated systems will require you to install some kind of computer and a hard drive, if you want to record your garage at all times. But we recommend a system that allows you to simply stream and record what’s going on in your garage when you suspect activity inside.
Many of these systems can let you watch — and even record — what the cameras see from your smartphone, tablet or computer.
Having this video will help police immensely find the culprit, but more importantly, it won’t require you to approach an intruder.
Security Alarm
If you have a home security alarm, hopefully it’s hooked up to your garage.
You’d be surprised how many people forget to include the garage when installing a home security system. Your garage is filled with many valuables, make sure they’re secured and protected!
An alarm system will not only scare your intruder, but also notify the police. You’ll likely receive a phone call from your security service provider to make sure your safe as well.
A home security system can be expensive, but when you need to use it, you’ll be thankful.
Bio: Ken Mathers has heard his fair share of home security stories and has applied that knowledge and experience as a consultant for Quokka Garage Doors.