DIY Home Security | Homestead Security | Forums

Here are some thoughts on some options for setting up a DIY Home Security System. Some people will read this and think, Kyle, aren't you going a little overboard? I might have thought that way one time as well. When we built our house we just had motion lights and a simple camera system, I thought that was enough. We live in a quiet small town with one traffic light, we always left our cars unlocked etc. Until one night at 1 a.m. we had this happen at our house.

The only thing that stopped him from coming in our front door was our dogs. Bad people do bad things to good people in this world. I will do whatever I can to provide the safest situation for my family. So here are my thoughts on what we have done.

1. First what I would recommend is have a couple friends come over to your house and take a look at your layout through someone else's eyes. Pose the question, If you were trying to break into my house or cause my family harm, how would you do it. People can get blinders on when looking at their own property, case in point, the picture above. I had thought that if someone was going to try and rob us they would come along two pathways, I was wrong, the picture above was the only view I had of the guy on our property. I had focused our cameras on the way that I would approach the house which was the path coming along our house to the front door, he instead cut through the three neighbors yard which had no cameras pointing on it, all we caught on camera was the back of his head as he walked towards our door.

2. Motion lights

Bad people like the dark, it makes it easier for them to not be seen. Personally, I would have my backyard lit up like Yankees stadium if my wife would allow it. If you have outside lights as most people have, you can easily swap them out for motion lights that go off when people approach. If you have no outside lights, there are quite a few solar options that are available on the market.  Also, add a buzzer that ties into your motion lights. The way our house sits, we would never know if the lights were tripped on the side. Luckily my neighbor is good with control systems and built me this buzzer

When the side motion light goes off, the buzzer goes off. If anyone is interested in the schematics and wiring for it, let me know,

3. Harden your doors with door jamb armor, which costs about 90 dollars. One of the weakest points in your house is your doors, people think because they have a lock and a dead bolt,it will protect them. That is a wrong and potentially deadly sentiment as seen in the video below.

It totally protects your weakest points in your doors and is very simple to install, here is a coupon for 10 percent off, click the link and enter the code ARMOR10OFF

http://www.jdoqocy.c.....6-11437822

4. Trim all bushes around house.

This is something very simple to do, the least amount of visual protection you can provide for a possible thief the better.

5. Keep ladders locked in the garage or basement.

Again, very simple to do. We had a rash of burglaries in the next town over and this is what they were doing. Looking for houses that were empty and just grabbing ladders that were laying around the homes. The front door and first floor windows may be locked, but how many people leave their second floor windows unlocked? A neighbor of one of the robberies actually saw the thieves in action, but she thought they were just painters touching up the trim.

6. You can get a 12v siren and hook it up to a simple switch and car battery, if you think someone is seriously breaking into the house,  flip the switch. Greet the thieves with a constant 120 decibel alarm screaming out to the world.

qid=1390688413&sr=8-1&keywords=Alarm+Siren+5+115+dB+12+VDC

7. If you have a car alarm, keep your car keys on the nightstand. At the first sign of entry into your private space, set off the car alarm. The goal is to make as much noise and visual commotion as you can.

8. A more expensive option, but something that is well worth it in my opinion  is 3m security film. It costs about 10 dollars a square foot installed but if you have ever done window tinting, there is DIY products out there you can use. Here is how great it is.

it can even withstand a blast

We installed the exact same level of protection on the front of our house and my fathers cabin as what is installed on the federal buildings here in Maine, it cost us about 1000 dollars, if you can swing this, I highly recommend it.

You can enter your zip code at this link to find a local installer

http://solutions.3m......dow_Films/

9. A burglar bomb. Pepper spray bombs are available as well. Imagine you hear someone breaking in as you lay in bed. Instead of being scared, you just sit and wait. You can slowly hear them sneaking through the house until they get to your bedroom door, right as you flip the switch that unloads a pepper spray canister right on top of them that covers 2400 square feet. I would highly recommend keeping a towel at the base of your door for this one, trust me.  They have several different products and mounting options, plus they can be tied into alarm system or work off a switch.

http://burglarbomb.com/

10. A voice alert system. In my opinion, this is the greatest thing since sliced bread. It is a alarm system that has a home base station that you can set up to 6 different zones for. So say you have a garage, you set zone one for garage and record your voice saying garage on the base station. Anytime the sensor goes off by the garage, your base station will trip and say garage. Here is the kicker though, you can have as many sensors as you want on the same zone. So you could have sensors on the front of the garage, on the side, on the back, etc. You can always have a false positive, but if you are having several tripped sensors in the garage, something is up in the garage. Here is also another bonus with this system, it has a 12 volt panel on the back for the different zones. So theoretically, you could hook up either the siren or the burglar bomb above to trigger when a zone is tripped. I would make sure that I didn't have false positives for that though.

113 dollars for the base and one sensor, only downside is extra sensors are 50 dollars apiece

qid=1390688100&sr=8-1&keywords=voice+alert

11. Connect with your neighbors. This really sounds stupid but unfortunately in todays world, most people have no interaction with their neighbors. If you are leaving for the weekend, give your neighbors a heads up so they can keep a eye on the place. Now I don't recommend this if they are some meth heads that just moved in, but build relationships that you feel comfortable with.

Here is a example of how that worked out well for my neighbors.

Phil came over and said, "hey Kyle, we are taking off for the week, can you keep a eye on the place?"

"Sure Phil, no problem."

So at 6 a.m. on Saturday I heard our voice alert system say, " Phil's garage, Phil's garage".

It woke me up, so I laid in bed staring at the ceiling, then my side motion light/buzzer went off.

Hmm, must be a cat I thought.

Then my voice alert said, " Phil's backyard, Phil's backyard".

Now it's time to investigate, so I grabbed my nightstand gun and my 120 pound rottie/gsd mix and walked around the side of the house. There were 2 guys standing on Phil's back deck with a ladder.

"Excuse me!", I screamed, "can I help you?"

These two guys turned around and there I was standing in my skivvies, with my dog, and my gun pointed downward. They dropped the ladder and said, hey man, we are just here to cedar shingle the back of the house, I looked up the driveway and saw their construction truck and trailer parked with the name of the company on the side. Okay I said, carry on. So later that afternoon, Phil and his wife got home and I had just returned from the store. I was walking back and noticed Phil sitting on the back deck with the shinglers drinking a beer.

" Hey Kyle"

"Hey Phil, how was the trip?"

"Good, anything exciting happen while I was gone?"

"Not really, besides almost shooting these guys shingling your house, thanks for telling me, dick"

Right then one of the guys piped up

"Dude, you scared the shit out of me"

"Sorry man, Phil didn't tell me you guys were gonna be here", as I continued walking around the house.

Later Phil told me that when I was gone, the guy who piped up looked at him and said, " That's a good neighbor to have"

And Phil agreed.

12. Do not become complacent. I repeat, do not become complacent. That is what happened with us with the picture above. We had the motion lights, buzzer and camera going since we had built the house. Buzzer would go off in the middle of the night, check the cameras, it's a cat. Buzzer would go off, check the cameras, literally it was the exhaust from our on demand hot water system setting it off. Buzzer would go off, check the camera, it was my dad coming home from the diner. That's what I thought it was when this happened. I thought my father was just coming home from the diner, until  my dog started throwing himself at the front door and I noticed the front motion lights on and my dad was sitting down in his cabin on his computer. It wasn't until then I checked the cameras. We had so many false positives that we just shrugged them off when it happened.

Don't, I repeat, DON'T!

Potentially you and your families life could depend on it.

13. Camera system.

I'm not gonna retype all this. Here is a thread on the forums where we discuss different camera systems some of us use, stay safe people.

http://thehomesteadi.....thread3001

14. My last suggestion is going to be dogs. There are a ton of people who will tell you what dog breed to buy, they will tell you to get the biggest, scariest dog you can. Here is the reality of the situation. From a security stand point, you want a alert dog, you do not want a scary dog. Here is the difference.

This is my boy Rufus, he is almost 14 years old now. He saved my daughters life when she was 2 years old, I love this dog. His father was a Russian Rottweiler, his mother a black German Shepard, last timed we weighed him, he was 120-125 pounds. Currently he would lick you to death.

This is Layla, she is a full bred GSD and is very protective of my daughter. We have to introduce her to people before they are allowed into our house, she has only grown up around us, we don't have a lot of guests over. She nipped someone once who walked into the house without us introducing her and then ran into the corner. Here she is with our cat beating her up

And here is Jasper. My wifes pug. I hate this dog, all he does is lay around, eat, poop and eat the poop of all the other animals, including his own.

Which dog do you think is the best alarm system for us?

If you said the pug, you would be right, his hearing and his fearlessness puts him above and beyond our other two dogs. In reality, that's what you want from a dog, to be alerted. There are some dogs who are game enough to alert you and attack a human being, but for the average dog, unless they feel their personal space is being invaded, they will turn tail and run. Unless you want to spend thousands of dollars to buy a true guard dog, that mastiff, gsd, rottie you have, might be scary, but when someone strung out on meth that has no fear in them, escalates the situation, you will never know how the dog will respond. It's like a handgun that you constantly have a  FTE, do you want to depend your life on it?

I look at dogs as another layer added to isolate myself from the bad people outside. If you went with one layer, it would fail, the more layers you add, the better your chances of making it through a violent home invasion. Like I said, out of our three dogs, the pug is the best layer for us. He is fearless and has exceptional hearing. It amazes me what he can hear before what our other two dogs do. When he hears something, he is at the door barking like crazy. For me personally, that is what I want, I want a dog that will alert me to the situation, I will then rely on the other layers or my personal skills to deal with the situation at hand. A Jack Russell Terrier is another excellent choice of a very alert, small, fearless dog, but they also have a ton of energy. The pug on the other hand sleeps 26 hours a day.

I am not a expert in this, this is just my personal experience and thoughts

What suggestions do you guys have?