Home Security Tips: Keeping Your Garage Safe

When you move into a new house or apartment, you probably think at least a little bit about how you are going to go about protecting your home security. You build a fence, set up a home alarm system, modernize the doors and windows, and call it a day. But many homeowners forget about an incredibly important aspect of home security: your garage.

Not only does your garage contain your cars, but it often serves as the storage location for a host of other valuable items: bikes, lawnmowers, snow blowers, rollerblades, and sports equipment like golf clubs and basketballs, etc. This is not the kind of place that you want to have broken into! Thousands of dollars can be swept up in a matter of minutes. But luckily there are a couple of simple measures that any homeowner or renter can take to make sure that their garages stay safe.

1. Expand your home alarm systems network

If you have an alarm that protects your house, then you should be able to extend the area that it covers to the garage. This could be difficult if you live on a very large property, in which case you might need to get a separate system for the garage. But in such a situation, it is more important to have a garage alarm, because the buildings isolation will make it more attractive to potential thieves. What extending the network does is that it means if someone smashes your garage window or tries to jimmy open the door, the alarm will sound off and alert the police just like it would if anywhere else in the house experienced such a security breech. The robbers will most likely abandon ship before even coming close to touching your brand new car.

2. Install a security keypad

Do not rely on a simple lock for your garage. Even an amateur could probably pick it, and then give himself easy access to thousands of dollars of automobiles and lawn care equipment. It is cheap to get one of those security pads into which you can enter a code to open the door. Just make sure to pick a good one. The numerical part of your houses address is just about as bad as it gets. The year the house was built or that a family member was born is a bad idea, too. The best option is to just choose something completely random, but then make that your numerical password to everything so that you actually remember it.

3. Block the windows

Some garages will have windows that allow anyone to peer in to see what is inside. You definitely do not want to allow this to happen, so block the windows with opaque curtains or even cardboard if you have to. Advertizing the fact that you just bought a Beamer or that you have a brand-new snow blower in your hands is not a great idea.

4. Keep the door between the house and the garage locked at all times

If you have an attached garage, you want to remember to always keep the door into the house locked. Even if the garage itself is locked with a keypad pass code, you never know when someone might forget to close the garage door, leaving your entire house vulnerable to attack.