Residential Protections

[MrE]

It disturbs me to see so many home owners discussing all of the things they have done to fortify their homes against intruders. Home security is no more something that should be undertaken by untrained individuals than neurosurgery or legal litigation. That being said, since I know so many will ignore this advice, here some ways to achieve at least a basic level of safety in your home:

Go to the outermost perimeter of your property and see how you would get in if you lost your keys. Can you easily climb or the wall or fence or jump over it from the back of a vehicle? Make it higher. If you don't want to add more bricks or other man-made materials, build a trellis and plant thorny vines on it. Where can you place CCTV cameras and motion sensor lights to give total visual coverage of the outside of the wall? Is the lock on the front gate sufficient? Do you keep it locked all of the time?

Now go inside the wall. How easy is it for a thief or attacker to get from here to your house? Are there any barriers to slow his progress? In addition to electronic devices, you can easily use decorative items to present obstacles to make a quick dash more difficult. Check to see if there a lot of places for someone to hide en route to your house. If your system notifies you that someone is on your property, you need to be able to see where he is so that you can react correctly in getting your loved ones to somewhere safe within your home. If there are bushes next to windows and doors, they should be moved as this gives a criminal the cover he requires while he makes his entry into the house.

Be sure that all outside doors are solid wood and not the paneled kind. They should be hung with the hinges inside with steel hinge screws at least 7cm long. Amazingly, most door hinges are brass and only 3 cm long, which can easily be pulled out of the door frame with little effort. If there are windows or a mail slot in the door itself or windows nearby, install a double key dead bolt and keep the key out of sight far away from the door. If there are no windows near the door, install a peephole so that you can always see who is at your door before you open it. Never hide a spare key outside, no matter how clever you think your hiding place may be. In this case, the thieves are the professionals and convincing yourself that because they are scum they must be stupid is a big mistake. If you have any windows with louvers, glue all of the glass slats in place.

Put a smoke detector and fire extinguisher in every room. If you have steel bars on your windows and doors, be sure that one set in every room can be opened quickly with your eyes closed in case of fire. Thinking you can make a successful run through the flames to the front door is an often fatal mistake. Upstairs rooms should have an emergency chain ladder that reaches the ground.

Prepare a "safe room" where you and your family can hide should intruders get through your defenses. It doesn't have to be the high tech kind like in the Jody Foster movie "Panic Room" but it should include a lot of the same elements. You can make one of the bedrooms more secure by adding a rebar mesh on the hallway wall and then plastering over it. Replace the hollow door with a solid one set into a heavy duty frame, steel would be best, hung with the same 7cm steel screws as the outer doors. Install a deadbolt lock. Make sure there is always a charged mobile phone in the room, along with any emergency medications and drinking water for family member who might have need in case of high stress situations (like heart, high blood pressure or asthma meds).

And lastly, don't be a hero like you see in the movies. In those, the man of the house, after his wife wakes from hearing a strange noise, grabs his baseball bat or golf club and volunteers to check it out. He invariably gets killed. If you are the victim of a home invasion in Thailand, it is very likely the bad guys are high on yaa baa (speed) which will make them faster, angrier and less likely to feel pain than you. I have had friends in their 50's and 60's tell me about how confident they are about taking on "some punk" who breaks into their home because they trained in martial arts twenty years ago. I also had training and am proficient with small arms and other fighting weapons. Forget about it! My Wing Chun instructor said the first option is always to get away from the danger if possible.The best advice I can give is to spend those precious minutes getting your family safe. Let them take your stuff which can be replaced. Your life or those of your loved ones cannot.

[gdhm]

MrE A BIG thank you for your excellent advice which I have read with great interest.

My house has a room zonal alarm system (includes a panic alarm system) System is battery backed up

All round my house I have PIRs (based on the viewpoint of deterrent).

I must admit the exteriors doors are not good quality (some are glass sliding) so I have assumed they offer minimal security. However, we have quality grills on all windows and particularly strong INNER ones behind all doors (wood or glass sliding).

Must admit MrE, I do not have smoke alarms. Will look into getting some (and extinguishers, one suitable for kitchen and general ones one for ground floor and one upstairs

My biggest concern has always been as you rightly suggest not contents but my families safety. (I have insurance for the contents anyway).

We have baseball bats in our bedrooms (but purely for last resort use). Assuming at night: My intention would be to stay inside the bedrooms, lock the doors, push the furniture across the door. Make noise so the intruders know I am awake and aware of their presence(in the hopes they'd decide to leave knowing their presence had been detected, and guessing (correctly) I have/am phoning the police).

Two further EASY things I have all planned out already (once again based upon hope to get intruders to quickly leave on their OWN accord).

We have a remote controlled boundary gate. If one presses one of the two remote control buttons for more than 2 seconds it sounds a continuous alarm. I would also think about opening the gate slightly to aid intruder escape (I say think because it would depend upon whether I could see or felt there were others in the road waiting in a car/truck) I would not wish to help others to easily enter.

Maybe my most effective deterrent is actually my Toyota Vigo as it has an alarm system. Using my remote from my bedroom I can easily operate the Vigo's locks AND its panic alarm and I can tell you (from accidental triggering ) that the Vigo's alarm system would be enough to "wake up to dead" in the early hours .

If intruders entered the house at night and I was aware of them downstairs I would immediately trigger the house, gate and car alarms. HOPEFULLY that would cause a hasty exit with so much attraction for all our neighbours.

We have no actual real weapons and I would not wish to use a gun/knives anyway because in a scary, unpredictable situation I feel that inexperienced hands trying to defend with guns or knives would not put me and my family in greater danger. I suppose I one am one of those who believe (rightly or wrongly) if intruders should see you with a weapon then they are more likely to feel threatened and more likely to be provoked into attacking or shoot first.

A question for you MrE if I may:

I have always wondered whether too much visual deterrents may encourage suspicion a house is worth investigating (what are they protecting so to speak?)

If Mal intents think it is protection of people only, then no problem BUT I worry they will think there are valuable contents in my house (which in fact there are not) and this is one reason I did not opt for some sort of CCTV). Do you have any views on this MrE?

Thanks again for your excellent post.

Regards Dave

[FarangBuddha]

The op makes some good suggestions but most of them are overkill. I just don't understand why so many farangs in Thailand are paranoid of in-home robberies or invasions. Nothing in one's house should be very valuable and all the high-tech cameras and alarms that are always talked about are surely more expensive than buying a new tellie, camera, or notebook!

The first and main piece of advice is not to live in an isolated spot off somewhere by yourself. Live in a enclosed village and get to know your neighbors. That way, you will know who should be around and who is an outsider. Also, your neighbors will be more apt to keep an eye on your place if they know you personally.

As to securing the home, solid doors with inside hinges and quality locks are important. Quality bars on the doors and windows with secured anchor bolts are a must as well. To avoid bars, one could fit quality windows with either safety or tempered glass. The windows should be fixed, casement type or some type other than than sliding, which are easy to break into. Finally, to secure a tile roof in place, one can apply spray-foam insulation to the underside. This not only provides heat insulation but seal the tiles in place so intruders cannot remove them and gain access to the house through the roof.

With these 3 simple steps: quality doors/locks, window bars or heavy-duty windows, and a sealed roof, anyone's home is basically an impregnable fortress and safe from attack from burgler Somchai.

[MrE]

I have always wondered whether too much visual deterrents may encourage suspicion a house is worth investigating (what are they protecting so to speak?)

If Mal intents think it is protection of people only, then no problem BUT I worry they will think there are valuable contents in my house (which in fact there are not) and this is one reason I did not opt for some sort of CCTV). Do you have any views on this MrE?

That is a valid concern but my experience is that "competent" criminals will choose their targets before they ever see the home. But if you are worried, put the CCTV cameras a couple of meters inside the property perimeter activated by motion sensors or body heat. They can be set up so that the image automatically pops up on any TVs that are in use as well as on small monitors in key locations, especially next to your bed. This gives you total visual access to your property before the intruders reach the house.

As for my suggestions being overkill, all protection is unneccessary until the time you need it. As Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War: Do not depend on the enemy not coming, but depend on your readiness against him.

[gdhm]

I have always wondered whether too much visual deterrents may encourage suspicion a house is worth investigating (what are they protecting so to speak?)

If Mal intents think it is protection of people only, then no problem BUT I worry they will think there are valuable contents in my house (which in fact there are not) and this is one reason I did not opt for some sort of CCTV). Do you have any views on this MrE?

That is a valid concern but my experience is that "competent" criminals will choose their targets before they ever see the home. But if you are worried, put the CCTV cameras a couple of meters inside the property perimeter activated by motion sensors or body heat. They can be set up so that the image automatically pops up on any TVs that are in use as well as on small monitors in key locations, especially next to your bed. This gives you total visual access to your property before the intruders reach the house.

As for my suggestions being overkill, all protection is unneccessary until the time you need it. As Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War: Do not depend on the enemy not coming, but depend on your readiness against him.

Thanks for the advice. Seems like a good idea

Regards, Dave

[tangcoral]

The safety or tempered glass you mentioned are unbreakable or break resistance to a certain amount of impact?

And to what degree of impact can they withstand?

I can't stand the ugly security bars that I would like to remove.

[trogers]

The safety or tempered glass you mentioned are unbreakable or break resistance to a certain amount of impact?

And to what degree of impact can they withstand?

I can't stand the ugly security bars that I would like to remove.

Any form of tempered glass will break. What you want is laminated glass that can range from smash proof (as used for jewelry display) to bulletproof.

See - http://www.shattersafe.com/

[FarangBuddha]

The safety or tempered glass you mentioned are unbreakable or break resistance to a certain amount of impact?

And to what degree of impact can they withstand?

I can't stand the ugly security bars that I would like to remove.

Any form of tempered glass will break. What you want is laminated glass that can range from smash proof (as used for jewelry display) to bulletproof.

See - http://www.shattersafe.com/

Yes, safety aka laminated glass is what you want...tempered glass is what is generally used in furniture (table tops, shelving, and cabinets) and designed to shatter into small dull-edged pieces of glass when broken. Safety/laminated glass is the same used in car windshields and takes many hammer blows to break.

[iono]

Forget the baseball bat, go with Samurai Sword , one slice and something is going to fall off of their body, yabba or not it will make them stop and think <deleted> just happened