How to protect a country house from burglars

Recommendation points

• Ideal protection for the summer cottage
• Finding and fixing weaknesses in home defense
• Tracking, control and alarm systems

In this article: why there can be no absolute protection system; we block the paths for intruders; a double door is an unpleasant surprise for a burglar; imitation and real security and warning systems; “Panic room” for storing expensive equipment and property.

Every city dweller wants to be among the owners of comfortable suburban real estate, successfully located in some picturesque corner of nature near a river or lake. In a country house you can take a break from the bustle of the city, Brownian traffic on highways and the constant hubbub of the streets, spend time in the bosom of nature with your family or close friends. But for all its advantages, a house outside the city has one serious drawback – the owners visit it on short visits, which dark personalities will not fail to take advantage of. Only reliable doors, roller shutters on the windows of the first floor or agreements with a neighbor permanently residing in a neighboring area cannot provide protection of a country house – a set of measures is needed, which will be discussed later in the article.

Ideal protection for the summer cottage

Let’s decide right away – it is impossible to guarantee a safe country house from professional intruders, since criminals in this category know most of the protection systems well and are able to bypass them without unnecessary noise. However, professional robbers will not break into country houses without full confidence that solid prey awaits them inside – the risk is too great. Most of the thefts in country houses are carried out by petty amateur thieves, hoping that at least something of value will fall into them. Such criminals “work” rudely, counting on the simplest tool and physical strength – you can and should protect your country house from them.

The complex of works to increase the degree of security of the dacha from outsiders must be done in a non-routine manner – the more unexpected difficulties fall on the head of the robbers, the more likely they are to abandon the idea of ​​robbing this house. Go out into the courtyard of your country house and take a good look around – you need to find out how potential robbers can get inside the buildings.

Finding and fixing weaknesses in home defense

A country house either faces the street, or is located in the back of the yard, fenced off. In both the first and second cases, the robber will prefer to get inside the courtyard – on the street random passers-by may notice him. Therefore, the first line of defense is the fence and the gate in it..

The cottage fence should be strong, high and, ideally, impenetrable to prying eyes. A fence of 2 meters or more is required, barbed wire can be installed along its end so that it cannot be seen from the outside, but it did not allow it to be pulled up along the fence. In principle, the owner of a country house can equip the fence with several rows or rings of barbed wire, fixed between the racks, set with a slope towards the street, but the appearance of the site will lose from this. The gates placed in the fence must be locked with mortise locks – any padlock can be knocked down with a sledgehammer or turned out with a crowbar. Make sure there are no gaps between the gate leaves and the adjacent fence.

The easiest way to enter the house is through existing entrances and window openings. There are usually two entrances – front and rear, each of them must be equipped with a tricky door vestibule consisting of wooden and steel doors. We install the set of doors leading from the courtyard to the house exactly the same as at the front entrance! The leaf of the first door facing the outside of the building is made of wood, taking care of a strong jamb and reliable locks. The intruders must spend a lot of effort to open it, and if they succeed, the robbers will face a second, metal door, equipped, among others, with a bolt lock, which will be much more difficult to overcome. As a rule, when a metal door is discovered, criminals abandon their intentions – it will take time to open it, during which they can be detected. However, additional measures will help to increase the degree of panic among hunters for other people’s good, which we will talk about a little later..

Windows, covered with modern frames, are for some reason considered by many homeowners impregnable for intruders, although it is not difficult to open them – in extreme cases, it is enough to break the glass unit with a tire iron. Double-glazed windows with a transparent film applied to the glass or made of tempered glass are more difficult to break, but they will not be cheap for the owners. It is better to use an alternative solution – installing roller shutters on the windows of the first floor and, which is correct, the second floor, the guides for which are cut into the walls of the window opening. Since it will not be possible to install such roller shutters on windows without their serious alteration, it is necessary to take into account the installation of roller shutters at the stage of construction of a country house. By the way, overhead shutters, which are installed outside the existing window, especially those fixed with distinguishable screws, are easy to remove..

It is naive to count on window bars – almost any burglar will be able to remove them, using pliers to cut reinforcement, it will take only a few minutes.

Technical doors, hatches and windows located at a height – if the owners do not think to use them to enter the house, this does not mean that robbers with good physical training will not be able to enter through them. The attic windows must be protected with lockable roller shutters, the hatches must be enclosed in a steel frame and provided with a reliable lock, and not a rocker shutter. If there are doors and hatches to the basement facing the yard, they must also be reinforced with a frame made of steel corner and securely locked from the inside.

Another opportunity for burglars to enter the house will be a garage room, combined with the building or located in its basement. It is better to close the doorway to the garage with a sliding or lifting sash, garage roller shutters are also suitable – in all cases, the sash should be equipped with a bolt lock, which non-professionals will not be able to open.

It is also important to protect the outbuildings in the courtyard with reliable doors and window covers – after unsuccessful attempts to enter the house through the doors and windows of the first floor, the robbers will try to open them in order to steal at least something more or less valuable. In the barn, they can find a ladder to climb to the level of the second floor of the building in the hope that these windows are less protected than on the first floor..

The measures described above will seriously complicate the task of the robbers, but with the time, sufficient equipment and preparation, their goals will still be achieved. Therefore, you should not rely only on locks and steel doors, because it is equally important to detain intruders and preserve your property.

Tracking, control and alarm systems

There are two types of tracking systems – imitation and real. The cheapest way to simulate tracking is to install one or two defective and purchased for a pittance video cameras on the facade of a country house and equip their body with flickering LEDs powered by a small battery inside the body of each such “security camera.” You can put one blinking LED on the windows of the facade and facing the courtyard of the site – together with “video surveillance” they are guaranteed to frighten potential robbers.

Simultaneously with imitations of the tracking system, it makes sense to establish genuine video surveillance, only its infrared ip-cameras should be located covertly, placing the video recorder in a protected compartment inside the house – the wireless video surveillance system is the most difficult for robbers to track, since there are no cables.

A wonderful means of psychological defense of a summer residence is a siren, a sudden and incessant signal of which will frighten the intruders and force them to run away. The siren must be associated with a motion sensor installed secretly in the vestibule between the two entrance doors: as soon as the thieves open the first door and see the second steel door, a mournfully howling siren goes off. A good solution would be to associate the activation of the siren siren with the lighting inside the house, which is activated simultaneously with it. A wide range of experiences guaranteed to robbers!

Let’s imagine the worst-case scenario – the front doors, sirens and video cameras were not stopping the intruders, they intend to get to the property of the homeowners in spite of the interference. This is bad, but not hopeless – you will need a GSM alarm that informs the homeowner about the penetration of the cell phone and, when arming, the police or security agency. Upon receipt of such a signal, the owner of a country house turns to the police and the criminals will be promptly detained.

There is one more nuance – alarm systems work only if power is supplied to them, and this moment is well known to experienced robbers. It is not difficult for attackers to cut the electrical wiring at home and wait a couple of days so that the backup power supply batteries are completely discharged, so it is important for the homeowner to receive alarms not only when there is no traffic in the house, but also in the absence of power supply. Often such signals are ignored by the owners of summer cottages, because power outages in Russia, unfortunately, are in the order of things – this is what the robbers are counting on.!

Before a long absence, you need to remove all valuable property from the country house – if possible, then household appliances along with garden equipment. If it is impossible to do this, it makes sense to arrange a secret “panic room” in the house, the entrance to which, for example, hides the cabinet from ceiling to floor, and there are no other openings – steel roller shutters will help to block access to this room, which are very difficult.

Finally, if you do not save your property, then insurance of the building and the property inside it will help to compensate for the losses from the actions of intruders – the cost of payments will be about 1-1.5% of the value of real estate and property.

Please note – in most cases, the source of information for burglars is the homeowner, his family members, relatives and friends, as well as employees of the companies that installed security and warning systems. No one except the homeowner should know the exact location of the security and alarm system devices; he needs to personally make sure that the systems are working properly before leaving the country house, and that all windows, doors and hatches are locked with locks. Be careful and pedantic – any of your mistakes in the defense of the house will benefit the robbers!