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Home security systems are only as strong as their weakest link, and if you set up equipment that's too complicated for household members to use, they are likely to ignore the equipment or work around it. Remember that the people in your home are part of any security arrangements you make, so you have to be realistic about how much hassle they are willing to accept in the name of security.
1. Be sure your home appears occupied.
Most thieves are opportunistic. They come into a neighborhood and look for houses that seem undefended and unoccupied. An important part of home security is making your home look occupied at all times
One big clue that you are out of town is if your mail or newspapers are piling up. Never allow newspapers to accumulate in the front yard.
Interior lights are also important in making a home look occupied. Not only should some lights be on, but the array of lights should change just as it would if the home were occupied. The easiest way to do this is with timers.
Another very simple way to make a house appear occupied is to leave on a TV or radio with the volume turned up loud enough to be heard by someone approaching the doors or windows.
Leaving a car in the garage or driveway can also be a deterrent. If you are going on a trip and not leaving a car at home, you might want to make arrangements with the next door neighbor to park one of their cars in your driveway while you are away.
2. Create perimeter defenses.
Another important home security measure involves making it difficult to get near the home. This is most commonly accomplished by a high wall or fence.
In many parts of the world, this is the primary home security tactic, but it does suffer from some shortcomings. Generally, it is easier to sneak undetected over or under a wall or fence than it is to force entry into a home.
Yet perimeter defenses often give occupants of the home a false sense of security that may lead them to get sloppy about locking doors and windows. For this reason, perimeter defenses are most effective when they are either very difficult to penetrate or are augmented by cameras and/or motion detectors.
3. Be sure all entrances are well lit.
For most homes, perimeter defenses like walls and fences are of little use. Most people assume that the next line of defense is doors and windows, but there is something that comes first. It's based on the simple fact that thieves want to do their work where no one can see them. This means you want to make sure the outside of your home is well lit - especially at any potential points of entry. An effective solution is motion detector lights. These inexpensive devices can be set up to turn on whenever something moves near it.
4. Install deadbolts and peepholes on doors.
Most home security measures are concentrated on doors. With doors, the two main issues are structural integrity and locks.
Recommended for exterior doors, deadbolt locks are substantial locks that lock the door into the frame. Deadbolts come in keyed versions, which always require a key, and levered versions that only require a key to open from the outside. If no glass is nearby, the lever version is best as it is more likely to get used.
There are many facets to your ensuring your personal home security.
Sliding glass doors present a special challenge. Most are vulnerable to breakage. The simplest security enhancement is to place a metal bar or broom handle in the inside floor track. Some sliding doors can simply be lifted out of their tracks. There are screws at the top and bottom of the inside of the door that control how it sits in the track. Adjust these so that the door cannot be lifted so high that the bottom comes free from the track.
Every front door should be equipped with a peephole. This is a very inexpensive, easy to install device that allows you to check out a visitor before you open the door. For the same reason, an intercom can allow you to communicate with a caller before deciding whether to open the door or deactivate an alarm.
5. Secure your home's windows.
While your home may only have two or three doors, it may have a dozen or more windows. Burglars know that if you systematically check all the windows in a house, there is a good chance that at least one will remain unlocked.
Most standard window locks are very simple to jimmy or force. Heavier locks will improve your home security quite a bit. Another simple, inexpensive tactic that is effective for double hung windows (those with two sliding panels that go up and down or side to side) is window pins. There are specially made pins, or large nails can easily be used.
6. Remember your home's other points of access.
Exterior doors and windows are not the only access points to most homes. Many thefts take place through garages. Besides having valuable items stolen from the garage, the door that goes from the garage to the house is often unsecured or not substantial enough to stop a burglar.
Check also to see if skylights, crawl spaces, attic vents, and other openings may provide burglars with unrestricted access to your home.
7. Consider installing an alarm system.
Alarm systems offer little in the way of physical obstacles to thieves. Instead they offer an important psychological one.
In a neighborhood with an efficient police force, the alarm substantially increases the odds that the thief will get caught. Even in areas where police response times are slow, the noise and attention of an alarm may well dissuade the burglar from finishing his mission.
The cost of alarm systems varies widely. A burglar easily can disable some of the simpler, less expensive detection devices. The more complex and unfamiliar the array of devices, the more likely the burglar is to trigger the alarm or give up trying to disable it.
Response times to alarms are driven by several factors. First is the effectiveness of the monitoring service you're using. When considering a monitoring service, get the names of people who have had the opportunity to observe response times in the past.
The second factor is the protocol you request that the monitoring service use. Who do you have them call in what order? In some cases, you might do better to alert a helpful neighbor than to alert an unresponsive police force.
The third factor is the emergency services in your area. Most work well and a few don't. While you have no direct control over the emergency services, you may be able to draw attention to the problem and seek a solution through the political process.
8. Keep a record of your valuables.
Most area police departments encourage homeowners to etch their social security number on the metal surfaces of valuables that are prone to theft. When police come across marked stolen merchandise, they can easily find the true owner and return it. Photographs of especially valuable items like artwork and antiques can help police recover goods
These days, more and more people are taking the bold step of doing at least part of their job at home. A 30-second commute has a lot of appeal, but increasingly, people are opting to work at home in order to create a more humane schedule that allows for more flexibility to attend to family joys and responsibilities.
But as anyone who has been down this road can tell you, working at home has its down sides as well. The kids, the refrigerator, the bed, the newspaper and other accomplices all conspire to distract you from your work.
In addition, no matter how adorable your daughter might be, she may not always be the best person to handle calls from your boss or a client. It can also be pretty tough to impress a client when he has to walk by the morning dishes to get to your home office. Fortunately, most of these problems can be addressed by designing your home office space carefully. Here are some key issues to focus on:
Separate Your Home Office from Your Living Space
It is very important to separate your work area from your living area. Attics, basements and rooms over detached garages are ideal places to locate a home office.
If your office must be in the main part of the house, try to locate the workspace where it will be least impacted by the domestic distractions. For example, placing it at the end of a long hall is good, but carving out a niche in the kitchen usually doesn't work. Choose a location that makes it easy to control the flow of distracting children, noise and even scents.
If your workspace has to be near the house's hub, consider taking steps to soundproof the area.
While it is important to protect your workspace from distractions, it is also important to separate your family, rest and play spaces from work. For example, if you have a desk set up in a corner of your bedroom, your work may follow you to bed and haunt you all night long.
Design the Right Home Office Environment for You
This is the part of home office design that everyone likes. You have a real chance to make a workspace that supports the way you think, feel and work. For one person, that might mean a plush easy chair in the middle of a circle of tables. For another, it might mean a simple desk overlooking a peaceful garden.
For once you have nearly complete freedom in setting up your workspace. Warning: Resist the temptation to make it too peaceful or comfortable or you may find yourself doing more napping than working!
Remember to Consider the Right Working Environment for Visitors
If there is any chance that you will have visits from colleagues, your boss, vendors, subordinates, partners, clients or others, you must pay special attention to the kind of statement your work environment makes.
Whenever possible, have a separate outside entrance so that visitors don't have to traipse through private family spaces to get to your office. It is very difficult to project a sense of professionalism when you have to pick up toys or laundry en route to your meeting.
In most traditional office environments, you have the use of a conference room for meetings. At home, you don't have that luxury, so you have to make alternative arrangements. If your work area stays neat and has room for another table, you can create a mini-conference area right in your home office. But if your office is normally untidy, you may want to set up another room as your public room. You can decorate it to the nines and put plaques and credentials on the wall, and your visitors will never know how your real office looks.
Sooner or later, visitors will need to use a restroom. Ideally, the office area should have its own bathroom that is off limits to family members. This makes it easy to keep it especially clean and free of the clutter that inhabits the typical domestic bathroom.
If you can't swing a separate bathroom, consider designating one of the family bathrooms for office use. You might want to add additional storage in the bathroom to minimize clutter and make it easier to keep clean.
Install Communications and Power Infrastructure
It usually makes sense to have at least one separate phone line exclusively for the home office. If you use the Internet, faxes or e-mail extensively, additional lines are a good idea.
A separate business line allows you to use a professional voicemail or answering machine message. It also gives you the option of using call-forwarding if you occasionally work from another location.
A designated business line also makes it easier to keep youngsters from intercepting your important business calls. And, at the end of the day, you can leave the business line to the answering machine or voicemail without missing calls from friends and family.
Another infrastructure issue is electrical power. Copiers, laser printers and computers use a lot of juice. Check with an electrician about adding a couple of circuits so that you don't have to worry about tripping the circuit-breaker every time you make a photocopy.
Don't Forget the Home Office Ground Rules!
No matter how well designed your workspace is, you will have to establish basic ground rules for you, your family and even visitors. In general, the ground rules should support the above issues.
For example, if you find yourself making continual raids on the refrigerator, you may need to establish a rule for yourself that limits trips to the kitchen to meal times. A separate business phone line isn't much use if family members routinely turn to it when the main family line is tied up. And your "conference room" won't serve its purpose if it becomes a hide-away for empty boxes, half-finished puzzles and spare camping equipment.
Done correctly, a home office can support a healthy, family-oriented lifestyle that leaves you with more time and money to enjoy a fuller lifestyle
In considering your purchase of an indoor fountain, the location is paramount. A water fountain used in the middle of the room or in an open space between rooms will be far more appealing if the water cascades down both sides.
A large, free standing water fountain will need a space worthy of the size of the unit selected. Any unit may be placed against an end wall and the use of an appropriate table can increase the height and the distinctive look of an indoor fountain unit that appears to be too small initially for the space selected.
A striking indoor fountain to consider is a freestanding indoor floor fountain that allows a sheet of water to spill down a copper or slate wall, creating the tranquil sounds of falling water as it shimmers down the wall into the channel below. A copper frame may be use to deliver the water that then runs down the sheet of slate of copper to a base filled with river rocks.
These indoor fountains can be purchased so as to be viewed from either side. Many of these water fountains come with a specialized treatment, covering the copper with a protective powder coat finish to protect the material from turning green.
The more distinctive indoor fountains are equipped with a wall design than can be visually stimulating. A popular form is a copper unit with a wavy tile the keeps the water moving in and out as it flows over the uniquely shaped curved structure. A free standing water fountain can be especially captivating if the unit is the five to five and a half foot height. Such an indoor fountain is more apt to draw a persons eye if the unit rises to the normal visual height of the observer.
An indoor fountain makes for an exceptional centerpiece for your home décor. Having flowing water inside your home is a sign of status, signifying that you are in control of your surroundings. If all the world is a jungle, then an indoor fountain is your own private retreat. Whether you decide on a countertop placement or a grandiose indoor wall fountain, the sight and sound of trickling water will calm and relax you.
