Affordable Home Security on a Shoestring Budget
It’s a horrifying sense of feeling violated. You don’t know how to feel whether its anger, confusion or scared. I’m talking about being burglarized. A few years back, my brother had experienced several cases of burglary. The first instance his car was stolen right from the carport of his house, only to have been found six months later damaged, stripped down, and unrecognizable. The second time, the door to the shed at the carport was pried open with a screwdriver and several items taken. Burglaries can occur anywhere. In fact, these occurrences happened in nice family neighborhoods, and in an area you wouldn’t expect.
He did everything “right”. He had installed a lighting sensor system in the carport and had dead bolted the door for added protection. Unfortunately doing everything “right” does not ensure you won’t be the next victim of a break-in.
With the help of X10 products, I wanted to talk about a few added measures that can be used to add an additional layer of protection to give you peace of mind.
Having a motion-sensored light was a good start. But, come early crack of daylight, a motion sensored light is of no use, as there is already enough natural lighting outside to drown out the light coming from the system.
One basic thing that could have been added was a power horn siren. Once the motion sensor gets tripped, the powerhorn sensor could send an ear-piercing blast loud enough to scare anyone away, especially someone trying to work inconspicuously and not trying to draw attention to themselves.
If a power horn siren is of annoyance to you, X10 even carries a “dog barking” siren. Instead of the ear-piercing and deafening sound, a vicious animal attacking sound may be your fancy. These types of devices are relatively cheap and won’t cost an arm and a leg to purchase. In addition, installation is as simple as plugging into a standard 110V outlet! Keep in mind, in order to use these power horns, a motion sensor and a transceiver module will be required. The nice thing, the prices for these pieces are very affordable.
Another simple thing that many people don’t realize works as a great deterrent is a simple sticker with a warning saying your house is protected by some security company or system. These stickers can be found for very cheap and can be very intimidating to people with bad intentions.
If you have a tight budget but would like to purchase an actual security system package, the X10 Protector Plus system would be a great thing to invest in, as you get a control console with the ability to call you when an alarm is tripped as well a the options of adding additional pieces to your security system. Prices vary depending on what you need and can be upgraded over time.
For anyone who has ever experienced the feelings of being violated. You do have the ability to fight back, especially if you are on a fixed budget without the ability to invest a lot of money or time.
Comments
I just got my system the other day and took all the stuff out of the box and wow!! I thought oh no this is going to be A little harder than I thought, But not rally just read the book, I mean really READ THE BOOK!!! So if you take your time and do just one thing at A time you will start to understand whats going on. And with the tech suport, you will have your system up and running in A couple of hours:) thanks now when I leave my house I don't have to worry.
Posted by: Eric Striepeke | June 26, 2006 07:28 PM
Hello Eric,
That's the nice thing about the products. When you open up the box then start dumping out the items you start to think "Uh-oh, what have I gotten myself into?"
But then as you start to set things up, they really aren't too difficult to put together...
That's one of the benefits of the product, that you can save money by not needing to hire a technician.
Thanks for your post!
Regards,
Mike
Posted by: Mike | June 27, 2006 12:52 PM