Thinking of making your home safer via a security system? Daniel Jackson of Beyond Sound and Security in North Little Rock, offers these tips:
• Always do your research when choosing a security company.
"The one thing you want to do is just make sure first that you're dealing with someone who has a good work history." Find out how long that company has been in business and how much experience its installers have. "Jump on the internet, check their history, make sure they've kept their noses clean with the Better Business Bureau, things like that."
• When you get a new system, choose a user name and password you can remember.
"The one thing I've found is that [a customer will] get a new phone and then they can't remember their log-in information to get back into it."
• Familiarize yourself with your home's most burglary-vulnerable areas.
"Whenever you're looking at your own property, you always want to ... look at it from a thief's standpoint. [Ask yourself], 'If I were to break into this home, where would I go, how would I break into this home? Where can I not be seen?'" That's the first area you'd want to discuss with your security expert, he says.
• Inspect your house to determine how much protection you'll need.
"A lot of times that's not enough to secure a home. Most companies will go in and do a basic security system, three doors and a motion [detector]. When you're at home and the system is armed and in 'stay' mode, you're usually just relying on the three covered doors. If a thief breaks in through a window, then you don't have any protection." And in a large home, say, 4,000 square feet, a homeowner on one side of the house may not hear a break-in on the other side. Have glass breaks -- devices that pick up the vibration and sound of glass breaking -- installed around the perimeter of the home.
• If your system or monitoring company alerts you of a break-in, don't try to be a hero.
"Some clients want to take their own action -- go home, tie the bandana around the head, put the knife in the teeth and run in the house" to confront an intruder. "You just don't want someone to get hurt when the proper authorities are there to protect and serve."
-- Helaine R. Williams
HomeStyle on 10/01/2016