GARAGE SAFETY 101 Garage Security Tips

 An open garage with cars, lots of expensive tools and other items is an inviting site to a criminal looking to make a score. Here are 8 Tips for Safeguarding Your Cars and Tools

    1. Don’t flash what you have — Try to avoid leav­ing your garage door open so that every­one who dri­ves or walks by has a full view of your stuff. Even if you’re work­ing in the garage, leav­ing the doors down is best. Don’t park your high-dol­lar antique vehi­cle out­side, where every­one can see it. Try to keep what you have under wraps – and keep a low pro­file.
    2. Keep the door locked — This is just com­mon sense – but it’s a fact that many thieves nev­er have to break into any­thing. They just walk right on in – and walk away (or dri­ve away) with your stuff. Use a high-qual­i­ty door lock, plus a dead­bolt. If you have an out­side elec­tric key­pad open­er, don’t use an obvi­ous code or tell too many peo­ple what the code is.
    3. If your garage has doors with win­dows, con­sid­er replac­ing them with sol­id doors- As nice as it is to have a door with an upper glass sec­tion to let the sun­shine in, glass allows a would-be thief to see inside your place – and get in is as sim­ple as smash­ing out the win­dow. The same goes for the entry/side door. If it’s one of those that has a large glass pan­el, eas­i­ly smashed, con­sid­er replac­ing it with a sol­id unit that will make life hard­er on a would-be thief.
    4. Install a bright light near your garage- Ide­al­ly, one with a motion sen­sor. The light should be of the flood­light type – and either far enough up or oth­er­wise out of reach that it would take at least a lit­tle bit of effort to defeat it by smash­ing the bulb or some such.
    5. Con­sid­er an alarm sys­tem– You might even get a rate reduc­tion on your homeowner’s (as well as your clas­sic car) insur­ance.
    6. Make your stuff hard­er to steal - Tools should be secured in heavy, hard-to-remove/­move (and locked) tool cas­es; ide­al­ly, cas­es per­ma­nent­ly fixed to hard points such as the floor or work­bench­es. Locked cab­i­nets bolt­ed to the wall studs work well. Garage doors should have heavy met­al lock bars and oth­er such devices to make them dif­fi­cult for an unau­tho­rized user to open. An eye bolt drilled into a con­crete floor pro­vides a secure anchor point for a chain to keep your bicy­cle (or motor­cy­cle) where it belongs.
    7. ID your stuff — Mark vehi­cles (as well as expen­sive tools/equipment)  with a punch, Dremel tool or some such in a not-vis­i­ble/hard-to-access place so that if the vehi­cle (or tools/equipment) is stolen and found lat­er on, the cops will know it was stolen, and also, you can prove it is yours.

worth of tools. Read your pol­i­cy care­ful­ly – and con­firm the details with your agent. It’s also a smart idea to do a full inven­to­ry of every­thing you have – with pic­tures or video for back­up if you get robbed and need to ver­i­fy the extent of your loss. Sim­i­lar­ly, be sure your vehi­cles – espe­cial­ly antique/collectable ones – are ful­ly insured for their spe­cif­ic val­ue (what’s known in the busi­ness as an “agreed val­ue” pol­i­cy). That means if your vehi­cle is stolen and not recov­ered, you will receive the pre­vi­ous­ly agreed-upon val­ue list­ed in your cov­er­age. No hag­gling after the fact over what it was worth. A relat­ed point: Many of us neglect to update our poli­cies as we update our cars – or as the retail mar­ket val­ue of the car changes. If you recent­ly had your car pro­fes­sion­al­ly re-paint­ed, you should ensure your policy/coverage reflects that. Be sure the “agreed val­ue” is up to date, not based on what the car was worth five years ago when you first took out the pol­i­cy.

SOME BONUS TIPS TO CONSIDER: Home Security Lighting

  • Most mod­ern garage doors have a phys­i­cal lock that can be engaged to impede the up and down move­ment of the door. When you go on vaca­tion or leave your home for an extend­ed trip, engage in this lock. You can even go as far as unplug­ging the garage door open­er pow­er cord. Both of these meth­ods would pre­vent the use of a stolen remote open­er or the use of a spoofed sig­nal.
  • If pos­si­ble, clean and orga­nize your garage so that you can actu­al­ly park your cars with­in. Sev­er­al cars parked in my neigh­bour­hood’s dri­ve­way were vic­tims of a smash-and-grab bur­glar one night. Our cars were unharmed because they were parked inside the closed garage.
  • Just as you would change out the door locks on a new­ly pur­chased house, you should also change the remote open­er codes and key­pad codes for the garage door open­er. Look up the web­site of the man­u­fac­tur­er for instruc­tions.

If you’d like a free secu­ri­ty review of your home or work­place  — give us a call. We’d be hap­py to meet you.

Keep safe!

Allan

Share us On:-
Allan Baum
Security Industry veteran with over 30+ years in the industry. Founded family owned and operated Protection Plus in 1994 with his wife and has overseen its growth since. In addition to working with his wife and son, Allan has assigned the role of Chief Canine Officer to his trusted dog Waub, who joins him at the office every day.