Garage Security: 8 Tips for Safeguarding Your Cars and Tools

GARAGE SAFETY 101 

 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. 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: 

• 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