Your garage door is a huge entry point to your home – which is great for you… but potentially can also be great for burglars. Most garage burglaries can be prevented by taking a few simple steps to secure your doors. Here are the some of the most important things you can do to help keep your garage (and home) safe:
- Don’t leave the garage door remote in your vehicle! Whether while you are away from home or parking outside of your garage, if someone steals the remote from your car, they have a way into your home. So, don’t leave the remote clipped to the visor. Either take it with you or (preferably) replace that sizeable remote with a small keychain version!
- Secure your garage door emergency release. It is relatively easy and quick to learn how to put some zip-ties on your emergency release, so that it retains it’s intended function, but cannot be released by intruders. Here you can see details about how to do this.
- Don’t leave your garage door open! An open garage door is practically asking for trouble, even if you live in an extremely safe neighborhood. It’s a good idea to make sure your garage door closes completely. Don’t just hit the remote button and then drive away – wait to make sure it closes and doesn’t reopen. Perhaps, though, you (or someone else in your household!) tend to forget to close the door. You can install a device that signals your garage door opener to close the door after a predetermined amount of time. You can set the amount of time that elapses before the door closes, or override the control if you want the door to remain open.
- Frost or cover your garage windows. This way, thieves cannot see what is in your garage and they can’t see when your car is gone. Use can use curtains, shades or blinds. If you want to still allow light is, there are translucent films you can apply to the glass that obscures vision but still allows in light.
- Make sure your garage door opener is no longer set to the factory settings. If so, your garage is vulnerable to other openers from the same factory. Make sure to reset any codes.
- When you go away on vacation, unplug the garage door opener. If you don’t have an opener, padlock the latch or disable the door by putting a bolt through one of the holes in the garage door track. This will prevent someone from coming in through the overhead door while you’re away.
- Don’t neglect maintenance on the mechanical parts of your garage door!
Additionally, don’t forget about the door from your garage into your house. Make sure that is a strong door that locks well. You might even consider putting peephole into that connecting door. That way, if you hear anything unusual, you will be able to see what is going on without opening the door to the garage to find out.
Your garage and garage door can be one of the most valuable and most used parts of your home. Do what you can to make sure it is not also one of the most vulnerable. If you have any questions, we are more than happy to assist!
