Home Security

ennspek

Hi,
Anyone on here able to recommend a good security system for the home? I'm thinking alarm and some CCTV.
Is it best to go with a big company like ADT or are smaller local companies worth looking at?
All pearls of wisdom gratefully accepted.

spark240

Smaller local firm should be fine, see who's been sticking bell boxes up locally.

Adt and such will have all the gizmos....at a cost.

Roland

Do the alarm and cctv separately. Then if someone finds out how to turn one off you've still got the other for protection.

richh

Years ago I used a small firm to fit a house alarm system.  Quite good in many ways, but one the one time I recall having a real issue, we tried phoning them up and contacting them, and they'd fucked off on holiday!  No cover seemed to have been arranged for clients.

I can't see that this should put you off a small firm - as long as they have contingency plans in place.

Sambostar

ennspek

I used to love this song, cheers!

Sambostar

You can get  cameras pretty cheap and tie them IP addresses into your router and watch stuff like that if it's bothering you.  Focus on the teenage next door neighbour and make some cash.

Nikko

Our security system is called Willow. Shes a Rottweiler.

ennspek

Yeah I have two dogs, but quite like to take them on holiday with us.

Nikko

Fair enough.

ennspek

One of two. Soft as anything and thick as 20 toilet doors but they can at least look like a deterrent.

digitalscream

ennspek said:

Yeah I have two dogs, but quite like to take them on holiday with us.

We're quite lucky in that in our block of 8 houses (four on the street, four behind with gardens backing on to each other) everybody has big-sounding dogs. Loads of houses on our street have been hit by burglars in the last 10 years, but not one in our block of 8.

The bad folk clearly sent an alert out on their mailing list.

ennspek

Can't get the pic to work for the first time. They say it happens to everyone......

digitalscream

ennspek said:

Can't get the pic to work for the first time. They say it happens to everyone......

Fixed it for you

On TinyPic, just right-click the image, click "Copy image address" (or similar) then paste it into the Attach Image dialog here.

ennspek

Thank you sir. This has never happened to me before....

digitalscream

Suuuuuuuuuuuuuure

EricTheWeary

Dogs aren't much of a deterrent -  they might alert the householders if they are in but even then if your dog barks in the middle of the night you probably won't assume it's burglars and go downstairs with a baseball bat. Most dogs will ignore or be friendly to strangers,  even if they are defensive when you are there that doesn't mean they will be when you aren't. 
Houses that are burgled are often multiply burgled -  usually that their position makes them vulnerable. If you have something worth nicking that people might know about,  eg collect antiques,  then you need extra precautions. If it is just opportunists then making your house safe,  not leaving things on display to the outside world, etc,  probably more useful than an alarm. 
Reasonable chance if you get burgled it will be by someone you know so don't show the safe to your junkie friends or the decorator. 
If you have a desirable car then burglars may come in only as far as they need to steal your keys. 
Not particularly convinced domestic cctv has any value.  

digitalscream

EricTheWeary said:

Dogs aren't much of a deterrent -  they might alert the householders if they are in but even then if your dog barks in the middle of the night you probably won't assume it's burglars and go downstairs with a baseball bat. Most dogs will ignore or be friendly to strangers,  even if they are defensive when you are there that doesn't mean they will be when you aren't. 

Equally, though, most burglars won't take the risk. Their game is to get in and out without being a) caught, or b) injured. Big, loud dogs make both of those things much more likely, and turn an easy-mark house into a high-risk one.

Sporky

Our front garden is a tip.

I like to pretend that this is deliberate, to make it look like the house isn't worth burgling.

speshul91

2 ridgeback crosses and a Labrador do us. I live in a rough area and had no trouble. Yet living somewhere slightly nicer got robbed. 
Edited the auto fail out. 

EricTheWeary

I haven't kept up to date with house burglary stuff but when I  was involved (professionally)  the notable thing about it as a crime was that it was usually committed by a relatively small number of individuals. One person could be in double figures in terms of houses in a week,  stop that person and you stop a significant amount of local crime. The exceptions tended to be were the victim was known to the perpetrator -  breaking into a flat in the same block for instance. 
This means that burglars tend to be quite knowledgeable about what they are doing. Very little to suggest that dogs act as a deterent. More sophisticated burglars might target somewhere for the contents but ease of access is the bigger deciding factor than added deterents. 
If your houses are in a block I'd guess that the rear of the properties is harder to access (or harder to get away from) than maybe other properties in the area. Alarms,  CCTV,  dogs,  iron railings, etc, etc, probably do act as a deterent on some level,  it may be the decision between one house and the next. But if someone is happy to put a paving slab through your kitchen window to nick your car keys that isn't someone with a lot of boundaries.