Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Exterior Security Lighting

By Owen Jones


It is entirely normal that we all want to keep our homes and businesses safe and well looked after, but there are many means in which this can be accomplished. The cheapest and most cost effective way is exterior security lighting

It really is a no brainer, bad lighting can make a home or business a much more appealing target than the house next door because it has less satisfactory exterior security lighting. Prowlers look for dimly lit points of entry into premises that seem to contain riches, so when you are designing the security system for your home or business you should try to think like a thief.

Look at your buildings from the outside, or look at someone else's first and ask yourself, how you would get in there if you had to. Pretend that you forgot your keys or that there is a serious problem in your property. How would you get in? This is where chummy gets in and you must find out how to obstruct his every move.

Ten years ago, I lived in a bungalow alone with my small, knee-high dog and armed robbers hit me in my home, despite the fact that I had a decent home security system. Do not let it happen to you. My blunder was that I had insufficient exterior security lighting.

They had cut my phone line during the day and because I used a cell phone for most of my calls, I did not realize. Also my dog was sick, but I did not realize that she had been poisoned too. At eleven o'clock at night there was a knock on the front door and I opened it, thinking that it was a neighbour in distress.

A man charged in and over-powered me and the rest was not nice. However, the whole regrettable affair could have been prevented, if I had thought like them..

I was in the routine of pulling the curtains when I got home, so I did not notice that they had taken the bulbs from my exterior security lighting as well.

My advice is to check your exterior security lighting every night when you get home and keep the bushes or shrubs cut low around your front and back doors. Make sure that your exterior security lighting is working every evening and make sure that you can see who is buzzing your door bell.

Provide your garden and your doors with lots of light. Let them be on motion sensors and check who is at your door from a side window that looks out onto your front door. I had a gorgeous frosted glass pane in my front door, but that is no use. I could not identify anyone through it.

Get a panic button fitted by your doors, a big one, so that if you are surprised you can lash out and still hit it and above all make your next door neighbours aware that if your external siren sounds, that you are in danger and that you need assistance immediately. If you are not in trouble, you can always say sorry later.




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