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Home camera system: Ensure that your front door is not your weak spot
Whether you were aware of it or not, 70 to 80 percent of all home invasions by a burglar (or worse) come from criminals who enter the home through either the front or back door. And most of the houses do not have any home camera system in place. According to FBI statistics, there’s a home invaded via this method every 12 seconds or so right in the United States.
If these numbers don’t alarm you enough to convince you that placing home camera system around your property is important, I’m not sure what will! In any case, it should at least bring the idea to your attention and perhaps will get you to be a little more strict about keeping doors securely locked when you’re away or a night.
Unfortunately, most people simply believe that bad things (like a home invasion) couldn’t possibly happen to them. They then proceed to leave the home with a back or side door unlocked, thinking that since they’ll be away for only a short while it isn’t a problem.
Especially during the day, this line of thinking prevails over many unfortunate homeowners, many of which don’t know that you’re actually more likely to be victim of burglary during the day, as your average criminal understands that people tend to be away from home at this time.
Whether they be at work or school, a burglar is taking much less of a chance breaking in during broad daylight while no one is home, opposed to trying at night where risk of running into an angry homeowner who’s been awakened is far higher.
How Does a Criminal Typically Break Through a Locked Door?
Even if you’re smart enough to keep your doors locked during the day, this doesn’t necessarily prevent a criminal from breaking in. The most common ways of breaking in through a locked front door is by either slamming it with their shoulder, or doing the “mule kick” method.
Shoulder slamming works well enough, but typically the mule kick is employed. As it sounds, the criminal will turn his back towards the door and begin kicking it “backwards”, just as a mule or horse would. This is popular and used often because it works very well if you know how to do it, while also allowing the one doing the kicking to watch the street or whatever else may be behind him to ensure that he isn’t seen or being watched.
Why are Doors so Easy to Kick in?
Honestly, the average front door frame on any home is nothing more than a few two or four inch wooden studs latched together by nails and covered in a wooden trim. These weak door frames can handle a little force and typically won’t break necessarily “easily’, but if great enough force is applied continuously (as in a few strong, well placed kicks) they will splinter sooner or later. Serious home security can’t be discussed without the inclusion of a decent, sturdy door frame for at least the front door.
Unfortunately, the wooden studs keeping the door frame nailed together tend to also be backed up by a thin and weak strike plate as well!
These generally held in place with screws or nails that are less than an inch long, which also make an easy target for a determined burglar. Hinges on the frame are the same story on most of these doors – take a look at your own, and you’ll find that the screws holding it on to the frame don’t measure more than an inch or so in most cases.
What Can I Do as a Solution to These Home Security Issues?
Before placing a home camera system, I believe we should start with enhancing the doors. There’s not a whole lot of solutions to the fact that you have a wooden door frame made from weak, wooden studs – It’s simply a fact that most homes are made this way. Fortunately this doesn’t mean that there isn’t anything that you can do to improve your own home security when it comes to your doors.
One of my first suggestions would be to place a metal guard over the location on your door where the knob and deadbolt are which extends over the edge of your door. This makes it impossible for a criminal to fiddle with your latch and deadbolt and breaking them out of the door.
Remove the weak one inch screws holding your door to the hinges and replace them with some strong two and a half inch or so screws. You might also want to go a little but further by putting some two inch or so screws on the hinge side which is attached directly to the door. This will ensure that the side of the door with the hinges cannot be kicked out.
The strike plate is another important element of your doors sturdiness, and in fact may be the most important of them all. The feeble wooden strike plate you probably have at the moment should be replaced with a solid, five foot metal door reinforcer. This large metal strike plate will make sure that simply kicking the door won’t be effective enough to split the wooden door frame from the door, which is the most common way that a door is kicked open.
Aside from these simple tips, make sure that your door latches and deadbolts are solid and unable to be picked! You can purchase pick proof models which aren’t that expensive at all.
These make it impossible for a criminal to simply pick the lock and gain entry without forcing the door open. A peephole on the front and back door are another measure you can take that won’t take up much time or effort to install, but can be a lifesaver – some criminals are bold enough to knock right on the front door and rush the homeowner upon opening the front door.
You should also use Sunforce 80-LED Solar Motion Light for better home security .
Don’t make the mistake of letting him walk right in unchallenged!
Do you think that home camera system starts with enhancing your front and back entries? Let me know what you think and if I can be of help.
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