Home Security on a Budget

Many of you might be quite concerned about protecting the property that matters most to you: your home. Your home is where you keep your possessions, it is where your family sleeps, and it should always been seen as a safe place to go. Of course, if you live in an area with a high crime rate or you are simply worried about future events, then you will want to do your best to protect your home.

Now, mainstream thought will say that you should just buy yourself a security system. However, if you are trying to protect your home in the event of a national crisis or you simply don’t have the funds, then a intricate security system will not be your best option. So what should you do?

There are lots and lots of time-tested ways to keep out four-legged critters and two-legged crazies. All you have to do is make sure that you know your property very well and account for various “breach points.” Once you’ve done your homework, it is time to begin.

Door Barricades

Do you have any unused doors to the outside? These could be liabilities if you’re not careful, and a simple padlock will not do the job. There is actually a cheap way to block that entrance for under $30.

What you do is buy four 2×4” door barricade brackets. There are quite a few options that will utilize thin metal bars, but these will not keep out a highly determined bad guy.

This type of bracket will be able to hold a 2×4” wooden plank. The beauty of this system is that if you need to get out of your home quickly (such as in the case of a fire), all you need to do is simply slide the planks out of the brackets. Yet, at the same time, these brackets are impossible to breach from the outside if you don’t rip out the door or break it down by ramming it with a pick-up truck.

These brackets should be bolted to the sturdy frame of the door. Also, this door should be one that swings inward from the outside. If the breach point door of your concern does not swing into the house, then you need to either change it to the other direction, or simply wall off that door with cinderblocks.

The Definitive Guide To Keeping Your Loved Ones Safe From Felons, Blood Thirsty Thieves, and Roving Bands Of Looters

Window Bars

This has been used for hundreds of years to keep your window breach points safe. If you are very concerned about someone entering through a window, then it will be a good idea to install window bars. This should cost you about $400 for good bars, depending on how many windows are exposed.

Now, do keep in mind that for ground floor and basement windows, you will need to have either iron or some type of steel bars protecting the window, but for second floor windows, sometimes aluminum is acceptable. (This is up to your discretion! Use whatever materials seem right to you. If you are not comfortable about the second floor windows being guarded by a lighter, weaker metal, then use iron or steel.)

The reason is that someone on the ground will be able to use leverage and heavy tools to break the bars off or cut them down if they are a lighter metal. If they have to use a ladder, they will not be able to use the ground to stabilize a heavy breaching device, and they will also be very exposed while in the process of breaching. This can save you money and will also be easier on the frame of your house.

Also, if you are not concerned with crime right now, but are worried if social order was to deteriorate in the future; then you can simply install the mounting brackets now, and install the bars at a later time. Just make sure you store all the components on your property so you have them when you need them.

Protecting the Perimeter

This is not always easy, and sometimes fences can be very expensive. If you want a good way to protect the perimeter of your home, then you might want to think outside the box.

The beauty of setting up a perimeter is the fact that you will not be breached from all angles. If you do not have a gate protecting your driveway, you can still rest assured that you’ve bottlenecked the trespassers. The best way to defend a keep is to funnel your enemies into one breach point, and that is the purpose of setting up a perimeter defense.

If you need a perimeter to be set up tomorrow, then you might need to spend money on a metal fence with some kind of anti-climbing measure (razor wire, barbed ware, angle jutting.) This will cost you a large sum of money unfortunately, but it will keep you very protected.

However, if you need something in, say, three to five years or so, this is a great way to do it:

Buy seed or saplings for a bush hedge to set up around your entire property or vicinity you are trying to protect. This might be in the form of boxwood bushes or something similar; the point is that bushes are notoriously difficult to climb, and you need woodcutting devices to breach them. Not only will this be very cheap, it also does not originally look as if you are protecting anything at this time.
Set up a short five-foot tall fence of some kind with very sharp points at the top, and the hedge should grow around it. As the bushes keep growing up and out, the bad guy will have to not only get over the bushes, but they will also have to deal with the sharp metal objects protruding from the hedge.
Last, grow thorny rose bushes on the inside of the perimeter directly behind the hedge. Even if the trespasser can get over the hedge, the rosebushes will put them in a world of hurt, making them easier to deal with once on the property. This is an effective and still aesthetically pleasing anti-breaching device.

The key is to setup your security now, while there is still time. If you do what you can while things are relatively easy, you will thank yourself later on when things get tough. Good luck!