Home Insurance can be expensive but the alternative can be ten, twenty, one hundred or more times as expensive. The following tips are proven to help lower the premium of some home insurance policies however always check with your insurance provider that you will receive a discount before going out and spending your hard earned dollars.

• Installing a Home Alarm and Smoke Detectors will usually provide you with the biggest premium discount however please be aware that most insurance companies have strict guidelines as to the type of alarm fitted. At a minimum they may require back to base monitoring of the Alarm system. This can add up over time however if you compare the money spent to the savings made on your insurance premium and the protection that an alarm system and particularly smoke alarms offers you and your family I think you will find it is money well spent.
• With some policies you can choose to pay a higher excess in the event of a claim and pay lower premiums throughout the year. This could be considered if you live in a low risk area and have not made many claims in the past.
• Combine all of your insurance policies together with a company that offers multiple policy discounts.
• Regularly compare your policies with what is available from other companies. The internet is a great source for tracking down insurance quotes and you don’t even have to change out of your pajamas! Remember to always read the fine print though. A insurance policy that is heaps cheaper than all the others is usually that way for a reason.
• Document everything! Consider photographing or video taping your home and the contents in it and place the photos and tapes in a well secured location.(Not inside the house!) This will speed up the claim process should the un-thinkable happen and provide proof of the items that you had.
• Get Guaranteed Replacement Value Insurance. This is so important, the cost of rebuilding your home has more than likely increased since it was built and extras such as cleaning the site in the event of a fire need to be taken into consideration.
• Make sure that any high-value items are listed separately on the policy. The insurance company may require some proof of ownership and a current valuation of the item.

 Implementing as many of those tips as you can should see you receive a good discount on your home and contents insurance. One thing that can’t be stressed enough is to read the fineprint, you don’t want to find out the hard way that you aren’t covered for something due to clause No. 12 in paragraph No.7, you know, the one you didn’t read!

•   Control Panel
•   Motion Sensors
•   Siren

 The Control Panel is the central processing unit for the alarm and can be as basic or as feature-rich as you like. The amount of ‘zones’ that you can set up will depend on your control panel, with the basic units typically having inputs for 8 zones and more advanced units having up to 32 inputs. The control panel can also have inputs for all types of sensors such as glass breakage sensors, smoke detectors, flood detectors and gas detectors just to name a few.

 The control panel can also be configured to have a ‘panic’ function, ‘emergency’ function and are available with a built-in phone dialer function which dials phone numbers that are preset by the owner in case of a breach of security. Back-to-base monitoring if equipped is also configured at the control panel. Other features available include remote controls for arming/disarming your alarm, selective arm/disarm of different areas and remote telephone arm and disarm functions. Many companies offer different styles and colours for their control panels to fit in with your decor and not stand out like a sore thumb!

 Motion Sensors come in four basic configurations. The most widely used sensor is one that uses infrared to detect movement. There is also a ‘pet friendly’ sensor available that uses passive infrared technology and sensors that use a combination of both of these, referred to as ‘Dual Tech” sensors. The last one is not very widely used due to it’s sensitivity and it is the microwave sensor.

 The benefits of a pet friendly sensor are that if your pet is free to roam inside your home while you are away the alarm is less likely to be triggered, giving you an annoying false alarm. Your neighbours will probably appreciate this more than you, an alarm going off in the middle of the night for no reason can be a real headache, literally!

 Sirens come in many different configurations also. You can have a simple internal wired siren, a outdoor siren with strobe light or a wireless siren that can be placed virtually anywhere around your home. The placement of the siren needs to be carefully thought out, an easily reached siren can be taken out of action in a matter of seconds. The outdoor siren with strobe light provides the best visual deterrent and has the best chance of being seen and heard by passers-by. If frightening the daylights out of an intruder appeals to you a internal siren will provide the necessary noise and surprise factor for you!

 One good piece of advice is to talk to your Insurance company before making the final decision on which alarm to buy. Many insurance companies have standards that must be met before they will take into account that you have an alarm fitted. Your insurance company may also offer you a discounted premium when an alarm that meets their standards is fitted so it can be worth your while to talk to them first.

 The detection units are of the infrared type, picking up heat that is radiated from moving objects. Most lights can be set to stay on anywhere from one minute right up to twenty minutes after the light is triggered. A photocell is used to deactivate the light during daylight hours.

 The infrared detector has a semi-circular view of up to two hundred and forty degrees and can have a range of up to seventy feet or twenty one metres. If an all-in-one detector and light arrangement doesn’t suit your needs there is also lights available with a remote detector, this way the light can be placed in a different place from the detector. The wires used to connect the two are typically of a low voltage and easy to install.

 If you opt for do-it-yourself installation the instructions supplied with the light will have all the information required to successfully install the light. A couple of things to keep in mind is that the light will need to be mounted 6 to 10 feet or 1.8 to 3 metres from the ground for best results and the key to having the light come on only when needed is to adjust the detector so that the light isn’t set off by passing traffic or people walking past your house. There is nothing more annoying than having the light come on for no apparent reason!

 In the next post we are looking at the Basics of Home Alarms - what components are required and some of the different options you have.

 The visual deterrent alone will hopefully be enough to make them decide against breaking in to your home however if they are determined to get in the time and the noise made to get past your grills may be enough for them to be seen or for someone to check out the racket being made. There is a few issues that need to be considered before buying your security grills.

 As with a lot of things, you get what you pay for with Security Grills. The cheapest is not necessarily the best when you consider that the material that they are made of needs to be strong enough to resist any effort made to penetrate them. We have aluminum grills fitted to our home and so far they have provided adequate protection although if tested to the extreme I am sure they will fail. For approx. 30 windows and 7 sliding doors we paid a bit over three thousand dollars so that may give you an idea of what to expect for your money. Our grills are adequate but I definitely would not rely on them to save my life!

 Another important issue is being able to get out of each and every room fitted with grills in the event of a fire or other catastrophe. Swinging grills are available for this purpose and once again the quality of both the grill itself and the locking mechanism needs to be taken into consideration. If the locks look flimsy or easily tampered with keep looking until you find ones that you are happy with, there is plenty of companies making security grills so shop around carefully.  

 A single-cylinder dead bolt is key operated from the outside whereas a double-cylinder dead bolt is key operated from both sides and cannot be opened by breaking a window close by and reaching in and opening the door. Obviously you and your family still need to get out and having a spare key in close proximity to the door in a location that all the family are able to reach is very important. Some cities building regulations state that you cannot fit locks that are key-operated from both sides, so be sure to check your local regulations before spending your hard earned cash on new locks.

 For sliding doors I think you cannot go past a vertically-mounted keyed bolt arrangement. Once locked in place the door cannot be pried or lifted off it’s tracks. The only precaution with these types of locks is to once again have the key in a place that everyone knows about and can easily access.

 Window locks are a little bit more complicated and each different type of window requires a different type of lock. The simplest and safest way to lock double-hung windows is to drill a hole through the two cases, at a downward angle and fit a bolt into the hole. Having the hole at a downward angle will prevent the bolt from being ‘rattled’ out. The traditional butterfly latches usually fitted to these type of windows are easily pried open and should not be relied upon.

 Sliding windows can be secured with keyed locks that are secured to the inside frame with a hole drilled through the frame and into the window surround. These locks often come with anti-tamper screws to mount the locks and cannot be undone without the correct tool once installed, very secure. For more window and door security measures please see our Security Grills post.

 First of all let’s look at a list of areas that need your attention and then we will cover a few of these in more detail.

• If you like having trees and gardens around your home keep these trimmed well so that your house is easily visible from the street. Providing the cover that a burglar needs to gain access to your house is not a very smart idea. By having your home easily visible by passing traffic your home is less likely to be targeted by thieves.
• When leaving your home unattended for any length of time have someone come around and collect the mail, keep the grass cut and generally make the house look like someone is living there. If you don’t have timers for your interior lights have someone leave one or two lights on every night. Rotate which lights are left on regularly.
• If you have an answering machine do not say that you are not home on the message, just say that you are busy and can’t get to the phone at the moment.
• A small peep-hole in your front door is useful for seeing who is at your door before opening it.
• The locks that you have on your doors and windows need to be inspected to ensure that they are of adequate strength. Don’t forget your garage doors if the garage is part of your house! More on Door and Window Locks.
• Security Grills on doors and windows that are left open for ventilation. This one is very important as many home burglaries are carried out when access is as easy as climbing through an open window. Many child abductions have been done this way also. More about Security Grills.
• Exterior Motion Detector Lights - these are invaluable when it comes to home security. Not very expensive to buy and easily installed, they can not only provide the area with enough light to make a break-in less likely they can also frighten the pants off any would-be intruders if they don’t see them until too late! More on Exterior Motion Detector Lights. And finally,
• Alarm Systems provide a form of deterrent and defense once an intruder enters your home. If the signs that you do have an alarm fitted in your home is not enough to deter a thief, the siren noise and/or the chance that you have back to base monitoring with your alarm will ensure that once in the intruder will not stay long. More about Alarm Systems. 

 The scary thing is that the foyer area leads directly to a set of internal stairs and access to the rest of our house. This all happened while we were at home, during daylight hours and when out three kids were home with us. While we live in what I would consider to be a ’safe’ area with a relatively low crime rate and our house is clearly visible to traffic passing by, it just goes to show that if the person is desperate enough they will get in.

 Now this is where this experience gets scary, although slightly amusing. We had no idea at the time that this was occurring and the first we knew of it was when two Police officers showed up at our front door and asked if anything had been taken from the house recently. My answer was no, not that I was aware of. They then went on to say that a person they has caught stealing from another address had admitted to breaking into our house and taking a handbag and had described the foyer area and stairs in detail to the officers.

 My wife was at work at the time so I said I would ask her when she got home if she knew of anything missing and give them a call. When Belinda arrived home I asked her about the missing handbag and she said “Yeah, I know the one, Mikaela (our five year old daughter) plays with it and I thought she had put it somewhere.” Turns out the handbag was a toy and had around fifty cents of change in it and nothing else. We phoned the Police and they said that even though it was pretty much worthless he would still be charged with breaking and entering and stealing. What a clown, I wonder what he bought with the fifty cents?

 Humor aside, this event made us make some serious changes to our security level in our home. I shudder to think what could of happened if he had gone looking for more and found his way up the stairs to where myself, Belinda and the kids were probably sitting down watching T.V. or something like that. Who knows what could have happened. Needless to say the garage doors now have Automatic Controllers on them which act as another lock and motion detectors have been installed in the garage as well.

 So please don’t think it won’t happen to you, I hope it never does, but I thought we were safe and had enough security measures in place and as it turns out we weren’t even close to having enough home security. So what measures can be taken to improve our security in our homes? In the next couple of posts I will endeavour to answer this question in detail so you too can be safe from the ‘fifty cent handbag thieves’ of this world.  To start with please see the Home Security Basics post.

 Automatic gate openers can be set-up as a stand alone unit with wired or remote control and can also be configured to be operated by your intercom control panel. The ultimate set-up involves a solar-powered gate opener combined with a video intercom with camera and speaker placed at the gate and colour screen inside your home. Easily view and talk to your visitor and allow them access to your property with the push of a button. If your budget doesn’t stretch that far there is always the choice of an audio intercom control panel and gate station and remote or wired gate operation.

 Units are available to suit single and double gates, swing and slide gates, virtually any combination you can think of. Installation can be made easier with the use of a solar-powered wireless unit, requiring installation to the gate, placement of the solar panel in an appropriate place and having the control unit no more than around 200 metres away. Too easy!

 Self-locking mechanisms add an element of increased safety to your automatic gate opening system. As the gate is returned to the closed position the lock engages and cannot be manually opened giving you complete control over who you allow in. The self locking mechanism also avoids a gate being accidentally left unlocked. As for the feature offered in some top-end systems of being able to open the gate from your mobile phone, that’s technology for you! Open your own front gate from anywhere in the world, what will they come up with next?

 For more information on complete home security solutions please see our Who needs a Home Security System post.

 The visitor presses a button at the door station, just like a regular intercom and inside the phone rings with a ring that is different to the normal call sound. Once any phone on the incoming line is picked up the conversation can start. If you are already on the phone and a visitor arrives a call waiting signal will be heard when the door station button is pressed and it is a simple matter of switching over to that line to talk to your visitor.

 The features don’t stop at door to phone communication though, if you have several phones throughout the house a paging feature may be useful to you. Handy to speak to other people in the house without having to shout! With the use of add-on modules your phone can be set to operate a door release or gate release with the press of the ’star’ button on the keypad. Talk about convenient! Don’t miss any part of your favourite show to answer the door ever again. 

 So what is required to set up these phone intercom systems? The brain of the system is the control unit which connects to the incoming phone line. One or more door stations, depending on how many entry points you want to monitor and if you like the added security of video monitoring, a camera and a phone equipped with a monitor is required. As the existing phone lines are used installation is easier and less expensive than a complete hard wired system and there is little chance of signal loss that wireless systems can sometimes suffer from. 

 For information on the ultimate in front line security see our post on Gate Intercom Systems.

 Some of the music intercom system’s come with a built in AM/FM tuner and some even offer a cd player or cd player input jack so you can choose between listening to the radio or have your favourite cd’s playing throughout the house. There is also the option of having an outdoor unit installed in your patio or entertaining area, which can function as a regular intercom station and provide music for everyone to listen to.

 These ‘intercom systems with sound’ can be set-up to run all the features that a conventional system is capable of running and can be used as part of your overall home security system. The majority of control stations offer a number of radio station pre-set’s so you can program in your favourite stations and many have a remote control scan feature to select a different station from where you are. Hands free communication between stations is a popular feature, providing you with complete freedom while talking to someone elsewhere in the house.

 The control station can also be used to set the music sound level and control the functionality of each of the remote stations around the house. For instance if you have a sleeping baby in one room you can set that room’s station to remain silent while still functioning as a monitor so you can hear when the baby wakes. A baby monitor with benefits!

 Some sytems also offer programmable on and off times for the music. You can programme the music to come on when you get home in the evening or use it as an alarm, better to wake up to music than those annoying alarm sounds. Have it set to play music in several rooms and there is no escaping from the reminder that it is time to get up!

 As well as the practical uses an intercom system has, having one that helps set the right mood throughout your house with your favourite music can help ease the stresses of everday living. Imagine putting on a relaxation cd, lying in the bath listening to it and when you get out having it playing throughout the house while you go about your lives. Heaven on earth!  

 An interesting variation of an intercom system is the Phone Intercom System. Designed to be used with your existing phone lines and phones, it is the most cost effective of all the different systems.