Exterior Door Security Measures Help Keep The Burglar Out.

Exterior Door Security.

Exterior Door Security Measures Help Keep The Burglar Out.

How many entrances into your home are there? If your home is an apartment it likely just has the one door in from a hallway. A house on the other hand may have a back door and a door in from an attached garage, in addition to the front door.

It is of little use ensuring that you have sufficient exterior door security measures for your front door and neglecting security for your other exterior doors.

Likewise there is little point in ensuring that you have sturdy exterior doors and fitting weak locks. And a good door fitted with the best of locks will provide you with insufficient security if fitted into a poor frame.

All Doors Into your Home Should Be Secure.

All the exterior doors to your home should be of solid core construction. You can test your existing doors out by pushing or tapping a straight pin into the door. If the pin goes in with little resistance it is likely a hollow door that could easily be busted in by a burglar, these doors should be replaced with solid doors.

Exterior Door Security. Glass panels in exterior doors present a security risk.

Are all exterior doors in good condition? Any signs of rot, any panels with cracks or badly warped?
Your doorframes are an important part of your exterior door security too. Are they all in good order, well maintained, free from rot and strong and tight enough to resist being spread apart with a spreader bar?

Are all exterior doors protected by high quality deadbolt locks?

A mail slot in an external door can present a home security risk. Could a thief reach through the mail slot and operate the lock? Burglars have been known to insert a contraption made of wire and cord into the mail slot and use it to open the catch.

If you must have a mail slot in the door fix a secure box or cage behind the slot. Not only will this prevent a thief reaching in and opening your door, it will also stop him looking through the slot to check out if your home is occupied.

Do any of your external doors have glass panes? Have you taken measures to prevent the door locks being reached and opened by someone breaking the glass panels?

When you moved into your home did you change all the exterior locks or have the cylinders changed? Do you know never to hide a spare key anywhere outside your home?

Have any of your keys ever gone missing? If they have then don't take chances, change the locks or have them re-keyed. You never know who will end up with a lost or stolen key. Do not lend keys to service staff Etc. Copies can be made so easily.

Is there a pet door in any of your exterior doors? When it comes to exterior door security these pet doors present a weakness. As with mail slots and glass panes a thief could reach the lock by reaching through the pet door. A child may be able to crawl in through a pet entrance for a larger pet, burglars have been known to use small "artful dodgers" as accomplices and some burglars are in fact children themselves.

An electronic pet door may give you a bit more security. Your pet wears a collar with an embedded transmitter, the pet door only operates on receipt of a signal from the collar. These are designed to keep other animals out, not burglars, but if fitted correctly may offer the intruder some resistance.

Do you really need the pet door? Could your pet be retrained to exist without it?

Does your home have a glass sliding door? These doors throw a lot of light into a room and often give an uninterrupted vista of the garden. The drawbacks being that they offer weak exterior door security and are typically installed at the rear of a property and are not therefore overlooked by passers by or neighbors.
Make sure that your sliding doors cannot be lifted out of the frame and that they can be locked top and bottom. Inserting a length of broom handle cut to size in the bottom track prevents it being slid open. Better still, install a purpose made Charlie Bar that folds out of the way when not in use.
You will improve the security of your glass sliding doors by protecting them with security window film.

A Potential Way In For The Burglar.

Do you really need all the exterior doors that your home has? Think about this, the more entrances your home has - the more potential ways there are for the burglar to enter your home. Of course, if a door provides an essential fire escape then you should keep it. But some doors are rarely used and remodeling your home to eliminate them can often give you extra useful space and mean one less way in for the intruder.

If your home has an attached garage with a door leading from the garage into the house make sure that door is of exterior quality.

Once thieves have broken into the garage they can work on the connecting door unseen. For this reason you need to protect this door with as much security as the rest of your exterior doors.

Finally, remember that exterior door security measures are of no use if you do not use them. Lock your doors each and every time that you leave your home empty, even if you are just slipping out for a few moments � lock up!

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Do It Yourself Home Security System.
A do-it-yourself home security system can give you a tremendous level of protection depending on what you have in the system. You can go far beyond basic motion detectors and window sensors.