20 Tips for Home Safety
When it comes to home safety, it’s important to protect your home against threats like burglary, intrusion and fire. Having a monitored home security system is one of the best ways to start protecting your home against all of these threats, but there are additional safety precautions you can take as well to help keep your home safe.
Below are 20 home safety tips to help bolster your home’s security as well as help protect your home against fire threats. Put these into practice starting today to help protect your home.
The first 10 home safety tips focus on improving your home’s security. Use these tips along with your home security system to help protect your home and your loved ones.
-
Create the illusion that someone is at your house.
If you plan to be away for an extended period of time, leave a TV or stereo on in a room near the front door or other entry points like side doors or first-floor windows. Use exterior lighting and motion detectors to minimize places where a burglar could easily hide, as well.
-
Make sure all exterior doors have reliable locks.
Install 1-inch deadbolt locks on all exterior doors, and lock all doors before leaving your home or going to bed. You can also use optional home security equipment like smart locks to lock and unlock doors remotely using the ADT Pulse® app.
-
Always look before opening the door.
If you get an unexpected knock at the door, check to see who it is before opening it. You can also keep your home security system’s wireless keychain handy when there’s a stranger at the door, in case you need to call for help in an instant.
-
Don’t leave spare keys in obvious locations.
Don’t leave extra keys under doormats, potted plants or any other obvious outdoor location. Thieves will generally find them. Find an inconspicuous place to hide the keys, or give a set to a neighbor you can trust.
-
Secure your sliding glass doors.
Burglar-proof your glass patio doors by setting a pipe or metal bar in the middle bottom track of the door slide. The pipe should be the same length as the track. You can also use optional home security equipment, such as a glass break sensor to alert you if a glass door or window is shattered.
-
Keep garage doors closed at all times.
Your garage door leads directly into your home, so it’s important to keep it closed, including when you’re at home. Home security system components such as an overhead garage door contact can also provide added protection to your home.
-
Keep drapes and blinds shut.
Don’t allow intruders to easily see what’s inside your home – especially in rooms where there is expensive equipment. Drapes and blinds obscure a potential intruder’s view, making it difficult to see which rooms hold high value items, or even whether someone is inside the house.
-
Store cash, jewelry and other valuables in a safe or safety deposit box
Keep your valuables out of reach for an intruder. Use a secured safe or safety deposit box in a bank to stash away your valuables when they’re not in use. In addition, remember to arm your home security system every time you leave your house to ensure your home, pets and valuables are safe.
-
Don’t leave notes on the door for others when you’re not there.
Leaving notes for service people or family members alerts potential burglars that you may not be home. Instead, check in on your home using your cellphone or laptop with ADT Pulse®.
-
Adjust your telephone ring to its lowest volume setting.
If you’re going to be away from home for a few days, an unanswered phone may tip off a burglar that no one is home. Also, have a neighbor or friend collect your newspaper and mail. Never cancel delivery – since you don’t know who will get that information.
How A Home Security System Protects Your Home
-
ADT yard signs and window decals prominently displayed on your property serve as a first line of defense to deter potential burglars. Then, motion detectors and door, window and glass break sensors can trigger the alarm to alert of an intruder in your home.
In addition to burglary protection, a monitored home security system can help protect you from threats such as fire, carbon monoxide, flooding and freezing using smoke, heat and water sensors. It can also help handle medical emergencies
-
Get help when you need it.
Having a reliable home security provider during a home emergency is critical to ensuring the safety of your loved ones and your home. When your alarm is triggered, someone at the monitoring center is immediately notified and is ready to help you.
With ADT monitoring, you’ll be closely watched by ADT’s six interconnected monitoring centers that act on more than 15 million alarm signals each year.
-
Count on 24-hour home monitoring.
A highly-trained staff of security professionals provide constant surveillance to your home 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year with ADT monitoring. Even when you can’t be there, someone is always watching over your home.
And, with technology like ADT Pulse®, you can even keep an eye on things using your smartphone or laptop computer. The Pulse® feature allows you to easily check in and monitor your home from afar and receive security updates and alerts through emails and text messages.
-
Get professional installation and an easy to operate system.
A home security system is only effective if installed correctly and if you know how to use it. During the professional installation process, your installation technician will guide you through how to use each feature of your ADT monitored system, taking extra care to make sure you feel comfortable using it.
Easy one-touch access on your ADT digital keypad and wireless remote keychain give you – and anyone in your home – the ability to easily and effortlessly control your home security system.
-
Affordable monthly monitoring is available.
Home security costs don’t have to stretch your budget. For about a dollar a day, you can have quality home security services and monitoring from the #1 home security provider in America. You can’t put a price on your family’s safety or the peace of mind you’ll have knowing your home is protected.
In addition to following the 20 home safety tips above, having a home security system in your home is one of the most effective ways to help to protect your family and your home. Below are five of the most important ways an ADT monitored home security system can help keep your home and family safe.