We live in a basement, and in the past month we’ve been broken into twice, both times were both to grab whatever was closest to the door: first time a camera, last night my wife’s macbook.
We have a pretty crappy lock (and there’s even the chance that we might have left it unlocked), so that’s something pretty obvious to upgrade. Does anybody have any suggestions for good locks, maybe cameras, or how do you guys go about securing your homes?
Sorry to hear that. Break-ins are the worst!
Need a bit more info. Is the door solid? Can a good kick open it? Did they pick the lock or force the door?
Is your door down a set of stairs where people are hidden from view?
What kind of locks are on the door? Deadbolt? Or just on the doorknob?
Sounds like you’re unsure if the door was left unlocked by you, or the thief managed to open it.
General suggestions:
More light around the door. Thieves don’t like to work where they can be seen.
Is it possible an old tenant has the key to your door? See if the lock is good quality (not Kwikset, not a Smartlock that lets you change the key on the fly). Generally Schlage and Weiser are standard, Abloy is a very strong brand.
Look if they are able to force the door away from the doorjamb. You can add a bracket to make that harder.
Some tips from the police: VPD Home - Vancouver Police Department
Something a bit more unsavoury: how do they know when you’re not home?
Is it obvious in that you draw the curtains and turn on a specific set of lights? Is there a glass patio door that it is easy to see when the TV is on, or people are home?
If this is a low traffic area to your basement apartment you might want to consider motion sensor siren to scare the person away.
@ignacio that sucks. Glad you are all okay tho. Even putting an out-door
motion-activated light outside your door while you sort out the lock issue
might be a good plan.
Thanks all for the suggestions. Here’s a bit more info. Both break-ins were
at night while we were asleep, people definitely came in from the alley, as
the entrance to our unit is in the back of the house. We have two accesses
from the alley, the kind where at most you need to pull a string. Does
anybody know of any sensors to detect when these doors open? They’re far
from power, I don’t know if there’s anything practical that is battery or
solar powered, or maybe something passive that gets pinged from the house?
Our lock is not good quality, but we do have a motion sensor right outside
it that turns a light on, doesn’t seem to deter them. I like the idea of
adding a siren (thanks @tdwebste), but I’m not sure how that would work
when I come back late at night, presumably you can enter a code or
something (phone proximity?). Are cameras worth it? We have a nest cam that
we used as a baby monitor that we could repurpose, but then again it might
just get stolen…
A neighbour up at the family cabin has the above sign.
I have been trying out Ubiquiti camera’s along with “under video surveillance” signs.
A Ubiquiti camera costs around $200 and the NVR software is downloadable from their site, so you can roll your own NVR
Get a dog, pitbulls are a great deterrent
Shitty situation.
nest cameras (formally Dropcam) are extremely easy to install, and would at least let you figure out how they’re getting in. Streams to offsite, so nice way to get some evidence, even if they steal the damn camera.
If for some reason you don’t have a deadbolt, that would be the first thing to improve. Andrews suggestions for brands are all good.
Door chains (hotel room style) are apparently surprisingly effective if you mount them with full screws, but you have to remember to set them at night.
A door open chime (something like this, or more feature rich smarthome stuff) will make a noise inside anytime the door or gate is opened, and are battery powered.
If they’re getting in whilst asleep, get an appropriate length of 2x4"; lay on the floor, put one end against the door and the other against a wall. In an emergency you can kick it away.
If they’re using a piece of plastic or credit card to shimmy the lock open, screw steel angle iron or similar to the door to prevent that.
If they’re breaking a small window in the door and putting hand in to open from inside, screw break proof perspex all over the windows.
The problem with a single dead-bolt might be that one good kick on the door, puts a lot of force on the frame or material surrounding the bolt, causing it to fail.
Thanks for the suggestion @jon, that’s exactly what I was looking for (for
use with the alley doors). I’ll add a tougher lock to my front door, but
I’m not very comfortable knowing that people will walk into our yard and
see if they can get in the house, at least with this I can hear when the
alley door opens.
Sorry to hear this. Since you’re in a basement I wonder if you’re renting? If so, get the building owner to take care of it perhaps?
You could also consider a zwave/ziigbee lock for the leaving it unlocked thing. I have these in our house, you can query if they’re locked - could be hacked into an sms or notification on a phone perhaps. I’ve never had time to do this, but struggle with people leaving doors unlocked overnight too.
(Years ago in Australia I went overseas for 9 months and left my girlfriend living at my place. She later joined me for 5 months. When I got home 5 months after she had left I found she had left the back door wide open. Nothing was taken but the house was FULL of leaves. Australia is no more secure than here, was just lucky).
In the ten years I have lived in Vancouver, I have disrupted 4 break-ins in progress ( by calling 911 while they are happening, I didn’t attempt to stop the thieves myself. Two of them resulted in arrests, including a hilarious event with a thief that wouldn’t stop and a k-9 unit ) and have seen the end of at least 5-6 more (when they are running away with the goods) while walking my dog at night. I have also caught a peeping-tom that managed to escape before the police showed up.
Find out who in your neighbourhood walks their dog at night (you would be surprised how many dogs get a midnight walk), and make friends with them. I know that I pay more attention to the homes of people who are friendly to my dog when I’m out at night.
As for deterrents, I agree with most of the suggestions:
As for motion lights, and illuminated entry-ways. I believe they do not make a difference unless the area you are illuminating is visible from a high traffic area. If you are in the back of a house, and a motion light turns on … do you think anybody would care to look why? Most likely it’s either a cat/racoon/skunk. My strata had several break-ins to the underground garage. Installing a motion light didn’t make a difference. What worked was figuring out how they got in and fixing the issue ( they were pulling the emergency release for the garage door).
It’s probably worth while to have a chat with one of the locksmith guys in town. They have all sorts of suggestions. I was broken into in Sept (luckily I caught the guy). I had cameras, a top of the line dead bolt, and it still didn’t deter them. THey managed to crack the deadbolt with only a screwdriver. I took a bunch of pics of the setup and went down to Broadway Locksmith. They custom fabricated a big chunk of steel that fits over the whole locking mechanism and only charged me $20.
In my experience, deterrents such as cameras or alarms aren’t going to work, particularly if it’s drug users that are breaking in. You need to harden the way they’re getting in. One more thing that we’ve been planing on doing is putting locks on the fence doors as well. If it’s difficult for them to get out, they’ll think a bit more.
My personal (possibly controversial) thoughts are that people steal stuff because there are no consequences to getting caught. In my case, the guy robbed two places before me, and was about to rob another after me. This was at 7am.
When I caught him, it was just sort of a “ok, you got me” sort of attitude. But now that guy understands that there are real consequences when he comes into my space. I hope that’s a bit a deterrent, but I doubt it. Again, not necessarily recommending this, but for your knowledge:
Had the same issue in the west end 10 years back, I caught them after a bunch of cars were smashed up. That is such a dumb ass feature on those doors, there has to be a better way.
My Mom has a sign on her property with a profile of a doberman that says ‘I can make it to the door in 3 seconds, can you?’
Motion triggered dog barking/voices would be fun.
About motion triggered barking, try to talk to Simon, he built a neat one.
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