Orlando Home Insurance: Tips for Boosting Your Home Security
Orlando homeowners face a number of common risk exposures, from severe weather conditions to home invasions. While you can’t control the weather, there are many things homeowners can do to bolster their home security measure to make homes less appealing to criminals and vandals. One of the best ways to prevent a home invasion is to identify your home’s vulnerabilities and take precautionary steps to improve security in those areas.
Many Orlando homeowners start the process by making a sketch of their home making particular note of potential access points and exposed locations. These areas typically include doors, windows, dark spots around the exterior of a property and patches of dense landscaping such as hedges, bushes and trees. After you have identified your homes weak spots, you can craft a strategy to better improve your home security. Here are a few common solutions that may help improve your home’s resilience against potential property damage an losses.
Hinged Doors– Home security experts and law enforcement officials agree that, all exterior doors should be between at least 13/8 inches to 13/4 inches thick and made of solid dense materials. They also recommend that upgrading older doors to solid metal or wood doors will make it significantly more difficult for an intruder to break through. External doors should also hinge inward and fit snugly into the door jam and frame. Keeping the hinges on the inside of your home will eliminate the opportunity for burglars to remove the hinge pins and take off the door.
Sliding Doors– Sliding patio doors are often a favorite of criminals because they are relatively easy to break into. Over time the latch on a sliding patio door will often become miss aligned or glitch making the door difficult to lock and allowing it to become loose on the track. The latches are typically easily fixed by simply tightening the components with a screwdriver, however homeowners too frequently forget to do so. For those who seek slightly more security for their sliding doors, barrel locks are an inexpensive solution to additional security. Orlando homeowners can also procure new, better-quality patio doors that have multipoint locking systems with bolt into many points along the door frame.
Lighting Is Everything– Most criminals thrive in poorly lighted areas, therefore they will seek homes with many poorly lit areas and visual obstructions such as foliage, hedges, bushes and trees. A homeowner’s best defense against home intrusion is to maintain a well-lit environment, both outside and in. Installing motion-activated lighting at porches, paths, patios, driveways and other dark or potentially vulnerable locations has proven to decrease you likelihood of becoming a victim of burglary or vandalism. Path and landscape can also help illuminate your yard eliminating the amount of places a potential criminal can hide. Experts also recommend that homeowners set lighting timers, especially when they will be away or getting home late in the evening, to make it seem as if the home is occupied when it is not.
As Orlando home insurance specialist we understand how important your property is to you. At Newman Crane we work hard to assess the full scope of your coverage needs by taking into account all of your assets, from each personal artifact to real-estate holdings and vehicle investments. Our Orlando Personal Insurance plans are fully customizable with a variety of inclusions and specialty policies. For more information about our Homeowners Insurance Orlando FL plans, or any of our offerings give us a call today at (407) 859-3691.