How secure is your garage?

Many of us forget that a garage is an easy entry point into your home. Here are some tips to protect the valuables stored in your garage (your car, for example) and to prevent criminals from using your garage as an entry point into the rest of your home.

Thieves love to hit garages because they are often filled with cars, bikes, lawnmowers, and other expensive equipment. Garages are rarely occupied at night, giving thieves freedom to break in without being detected. And once they break into the garage, it’s an easy step to break into the house through a flimsy connecting door.

Garage Security: Have a Good Garage Door Opener

A good garage door opener is your first defense against criminals. Electric garage door openers make it difficult for a criminal to force the garage door open. However, criminals are wise to the factory-set combinations that come with garage door touch pads. You must change the combination as soon as you install it to prevent criminals from breaking the code.

Garage Security: Change the Garage Door Combination

1) Take off the lid and examine the set of switches inside. You will see a row of 10 to 12 switches. If all the switches except one of them are facing in the same direction, the combination is unfortunately easy to break.

2) Choose a more complicated combination by flipping several switches to the opposite direction. Match the switches in your receiver to the switches in your main garage security system box. It’s easy to change the combination code on your garage security system.

Garage Security: Inspect the Door

Of course, make sure the door itself is sturdy, with no loose panels, broken panes, damaged corners, or rusty chains. Ensure nobody can pry their way in at a weak spot on the door.

Garage Security: Secure Windows and Doors

Sometimes garages have windows. They should always be securely locked or even have bars on them to keep criminals out.

Garage Security: Secure the Door to the House

Attached garages always have a door to the house. This is a common entry point for criminals, as homeowners carelessly think, since it is an interior door, that it doesn’t need a very sturdy lock. This is not the case. The door from your garage to your home should be as secure as your front door: deadbolt it, chain it, even arm it with an alarm. Criminals often target this door thinking homeowners have overlooked it.

Garage Security: Keep the Door Closed

Always close your garage door, even if you are only running up to the supermarket for a gallon of milk. You should also keep it closed when you are outside, because criminals can observe what you have inside and come back later for the goods.

Garage Security: Arrive Home Safely

When you pull into garage, make absolutely sure that nobody slips in with you before you close the door, or you may lock yourself in with a criminal. Look around all sides and close the door as soon as you know it is safe, then immediately go into the house, and lock the door behind you.

Homeowners often overlook garage security, but a garage is still another room in your house and should be secured as such. After all, you keep your most expensive possession in there: your car.