7 Ways to Leave Your Home Secured for the Winter Time

While you’re enjoying the colors and festivities of the winter season, you shouldn’t neglect the abundant dangers and security risks of the winter season as well. Burglaries, house fires, and extensive home damages are just some of the risks to your home security that arrive with winter. Detailed below, you will find seven ways that you can make your home more secure during the winter to create a safe and comfortable environment for your family.

1. Home Security System

If keeping your home secure during the winter season is a top priority for you and your family, you should seriously consider installing a home security system. Home security systems provide a multitude of security functions and safety measures that will increase the security of your home during the winter season and throughout the entire year. Firstly, a home security system will monitor your home’s main access points, such as your front and back doors, all hours of the day and night. The alarm will trip every time someone enters your home while the alarm is active. After thirty seconds, if an access code isn’t entered into the numerical pad, an alert will be sent to the security company’s headquarters about an unauthorized access.

Secondly, a home security system offers other secondary security measures that are just as important. A home security system can be upgraded to include fire safety measures. These measures will continuously scan for excessive smoke within your home. If smoke is detected, it will send out multiple alerts to you, your family, and the security company’s monitoring service. When it comes to keeping your home secured during winter, there’s no better option than a home security system.

2. Motion Sensor Lights

The winter season occurs during the darkest part of the year. There are considerably fewer daylight hours than nighttime hours. Taking this into consideration, it’s understandable why career criminals choose the winter season as the best time to plan burglaries and heists. Criminals prefer the cover of darkness to shield them from sight as they surveil homes. You can help to protect your property from unwanted and nefarious trespassers by installing motion sensor lights around the outside of your home.

To take full advantage of the benefits of your motion sensor lights, it’s best to install them in strategic areas to increase your home security for winter. A motion sensor light should be installed on the front and on one side of your garage, especially if the side has a door that leads into the garage. Install a motion sensor light on each side of your home, making sure to place them as close to windows and doors as possible. As a side note, your neighbors likely won’t appreciate your motion sensor lights shining into their home, so don’t install a motion sensor light where it will face a neighbor’s home. This should be done as more of a common courtesy.

3. Hold Your Mail

The holiday season is a very popular time for families to take vacations and trips. It is actually one of the busiest travel seasons of the year. If you and your family are making plans to travel this winter, you should call your local post office to put a hold on your mail to keep your home secured during winter vacations. Potential burglars know that families travel often during the holiday season, so they will keep an eye on homes that have mailboxes that are overstuffed with mail. This is a classic sign that a house is unoccupied and is ripe for thieving.

Putting a hold on your mail will prevent your mailbox from overflowing with mail items and alerting local criminals to your absence. In addition to holding your mail, you should also call your local newspaper company and pause your newspaper delivery service to prevent the accumulation of newspapers in your yard. This is also a sign that a house is unoccupied and should be avoided.

4. Install A Carbon Monoxide Detector

Carbon monoxide is a serious concern for every family all year long, but it should be placed high at the top of your list of priorities during the winter season especially. This is due to the fact that both your furnace and your fireplace have the capability of producing this deadly gas. Carbon monoxide is considered especially dangerous because it has no smell, color, or taste. The only way to detect the presence of carbon monoxide in your home is with a carbon monoxide detector. It is recommended that you install a carbon monoxide detector near your furnace, water heater, fireplace, and on every floor in your home. Be sure to test them regularly to ensure that they’re working properly. Any carbon monoxide detector that is found to be malfunctioning should be replaced immediately.

5. Practice Fire Safety Protocols

Heat is a vital aspect of the winter season. In many parts of the country, the temperatures can reach below freezing. You and your family will want to keep your home comfortable and toasty warm throughout the frigid winter season. This means that you’ll have to produce heat for your home using appliances and other fixtures, such as fireplaces. There are inherent fire dangers in using such appliances and fixtures. It’s important for you and your family to learn proper fire safety protocols and put them into practice to avoid a house fire.

When using a portable space heater, keep it away from walls, beds, and clothes. Fireplaces should not burn unattended and should always be protected by a fireplace screen. Furnaces should be inspected yearly to check for frayed wires, gas leaks, and other maintenance issues.

6. Insulate Your Pipes

Along with beautiful snow and holiday fellowship, winter also brings freezing temperatures and biting winds. These harsh conditions can wreak havoc on your home. This is especially true with regards to any pipes that are located outside of your home. Pipes that run under your home or along the side of it are vulnerable to these freezing temperatures and winds. Exposure to winter weather results in the water inside of your pipes freezing solid. Frozen pipes will disrupt your indoor water supply, cause water leaks, and cause water damage due to pipes that develop cracks or rupture completely. This is a threat to the security of your home that is often forgotten during the hustle of the holiday season. Install foam pipe insulation around your outdoor pipes to increase home security for winter. The insulation is affordable and can be easily purchased at your local home improvement store.

7. CCTV Camera System

Your property is so expansive that it is impossible for you to keep an eye on everything every second of the day. Fortunately, installing a CCTV camera system can give you the extra eyes you need to keep your home and your property secure. A CCTV camera system will be your vigilant assistant as it monitors various areas of your home. The video feeds from your cameras can be easily managed by several programs. These programs will allow you to record, store, and timestamp video feeds for future use. The presence of CCTV cameras on the exterior of your home also acts as a natural deterrent for criminals who don’t wish to be recorded during an attempted robbery of your home.