Slightly gloomy subject but our neighbours were burgled recently – they had poor locks on the front door and the feckers walked straight in. But it prompts me to look at video doorbells, cameras, lighting etc etc. Another neighbour has gone with the Blink system which seems nicely designed and integrated with cameras, lights etc…but what does the massive think? Other options? Good/bad/indifferent?
In fact we have little worth nicking in this day and age (who steals 8 year old tellys?) and have no cash in the house but it’s the toerags getting in and ransacking the place which is just horrible.
PS – of course, the scrotes will get in if they want to – the whole objective is to make it look like more hassle than moving on to a less well protected house.
PPS – I’m not getting a dog!
Have you considered one of these?
I went there – Komodo Island. Seriously scarey.
You could have a Sparks-themed company – Komodo My House.
Seeing them in a fortnight.
You’re in for a treat Junes. Saw them a year or so ago and it was tremendous. A lot of love in the room for them .
We’ve got some IR activated lights front and side and rear that didn’t cost the earth to install, and they also serve to make trips out into the veg plot at night a lot less hazardous. We also have a simple 4 camera system rigged up outside that records continuosly to a DVR inside the garage – it cost around £250 to buy, plus a few hours simple DIY to stick the cameras in the right places to cover the parked vehicles, the garden up to the conservatory entrance, the inside of the garage and the front of the house. The cameras don’t swivel or zoom, and there’s no audio, but the fact that the IR lights illuminate anyone approaching like they are trying to escape Colditz, plus the big f*ck off “24 hour CCTV” sign probably do the trick. Mind you, we have a scruffy small semi whereas most of the rest of the village consists of prime posh easy pickings, which fact may actually be our most effective scrote-deterrent factor.
We got a video doorbell a couple of years ago from these guys when it was at its crowdfunding stage (so cheaper)…
https://wuuklabs.com/
It’s still going strong and we’ve never had an issue with it. Can be wired up for power but I simply use its rechargeable battery which lasts a few months (and just plugs in to a USB plug to charge). It keeps a couple of days video in the cloud that can be downloaded (I think you can but longer storage) or you can add an SD card for storage.
VIZ TOP TIP
Deter burglars by buying an old white car, paint a big orange stripe down the side, put a blue light on top and leave it parked outside your house
Put a rusty old car with no wheels up on blocks in your drive, plus an old fridge on your un-cut lawn. They’ll think you’re too poor to bother with.
They may however knock on your door late one evening asking if you want to buy any cheap power tools, children’s fluffy toys or large boxes of prescription drugs.
Yes.
I really didn’t think it through, did I?
” I can’t help but seein’ you have a ginormous great tree at the bottom of your garden, kinda spoils the view don’t it? Me and Seamus here, we could have that down and gone in one afternoon. £50 howzat sound?”.
“Why, thank you, most kind. Here’s the money. Were just going out for the afternoon. Top of the morning and all that.”
We return to our Norfolk abode later that same day. The tree has been reduced by around fifty feet, ie there’s still fifty feet left standing. There’s branches and debris all over my pristine lawn. Empty cans of Guinness bob across our small pond. And all of our garden furniture has gone.
I’m a simple chap always ready to believe the best in people…..
I also recently had movement-detector lights installed on the exterior of my house by a local firm. Front, side and rear lights cost about £500. As well as potentially being a deterrent to ne’er do wells, they also illuminate my way into the house when I return in darkness hours. I live at the end of a cul-de-sac and the house is surrounded by trees which eclipse light from nearby lamp-posts. I am currently considering a new front door and I might incorporate additional security with this. Coincidentally, just yesterday, I received an email from BT, my broadband supplier, offering various goodies including home security. Among the suppliers were Yale and Ring (see below for link).
https://store.ee.co.uk/products/ring-alarm-5-piece-kit–2nd-gen–b08l5twl9d-GBQ4.html
Interesting, thanks
I have a Ring doorbell next to the front door, and a 7″ touch-screen Alexa-enabled digital clock thingy on my office desk.
My office is in the garage, and it takes me the better part of a minute (and six doors) to get from my desk to answer the front door, so being able to see who is at the door is a real bonus. “No I don’t want a copy of the bloody Watchtower, now bugger off!” is much easier. It also notifies my phone, so I can sit in the back garden and not miss Postie when he is delivering parcels too big to fit in my letterbox (i.e. records).
It is great, but the cloud recording thing is free only for the first few months. I’d look at the Android equivalent if you want that feature.
Just as a top tip, these are brilliant. Cheap, really bright, 3 D batteries last ages. Installed in minutes.
NICREW Battery Powered Outdoor LED Security Light 1 Pack, PIR Motion Sensor Spotlight, Weatherproof Outdoor Wall Light for Gardon Walkways, 600 Lumen, 8W https://amzn.eu/d/eLFjgrx
Most stuff down here if not powered is solar rather than batteries.
Is weather too cloudy for too long to be viable in Blighty?
Nope. We have an excellent solar light by the front door which has exceeded expectations
I think that the most important thing is to have good quality locks on windows and doors. If they have to make a lot of noise to force their way in, they likely won’t bother.
I was going to say something similar. I live in a second floor flat, so I’m probably unlikely to be burgled as they would have to pass half a dozen other flats on the way out. But when I lost my keys on the walk home a few years ago I had to call out a locksmith. I had been in the habit of just using the Yale lock, and had never even had a key for the deadlock. The locksmith used a srtip of some kind of stiffened plastic to spring the Yale lock with almost zero effort and literally 2 seconds of pressure. When I got the locks replaced I was certain to get the deadlock replaced as well as the Yale, and lock both when I leave.
I think that happened to my neighbour. We’ve got the 5 level deadlock one which frequently your house insurance is predicted upon do if you don’t have it… you’re not covered!
A basic Yale is about as much use as cellotape. Look upon these videos and realise that you need something far more serious for your home:
https://www.youtube.com/@lockpickinglawyer
We bought a couple of Blink cameras to monitor wildlife in the garden, and I added another couple front and back of the house as security cameras as they are so simple to intall. They have a small module which wirelessly connects to the cameras and also to your wifi, and the cameras use batteries which last ages, so there’s no wiring, and inserting a cheap memory stick in the module records the video clips (you can buy cloud storage if you prefer). You can view the clips while you are away too, and it sends alerts to your device anywhere as long as you have an internet connection. Works a treat!
Do they work in the dark? That sounds like a potential solution to the problem of “who* leaves a cat turd on my gravel path?” I often have to navigate around it on my morning commute between house and garage.
My cat is kept indoors at night and often does a reciprocal territorial wee on the gravel in the morning, not that it seems to have any deterrent effect.
(*) a cat, presumably
Yes, they have infra red (I assume) night vision. We catch all the neighbourhood cats as well as the hedgehogs!
Culprit’s more likely to be a fox than a cat. Cats generally like to bury or cover up their “doings”. A fox will just do it wherever it happens to be and stroll off.
I’m not aware of foxes round these parts, just squirrels and muntjac deer, and the back garden is enclosed by walls and 6-ft fences.
Next door have eight cats, possibly nine or 10 by the time I finish typing this.
What’s the point of cameras?
I’ve not seen much evidence of the police acting on any video of burglars.
@RedLemon
My favorite story about the police being called about a burglary is the – possibly apocryphal (one rather hopes not) – tale about the bloke who rang Plod while the burglars were downstairs only to be told officers couldn’t call round until the next day.
The caller then said “Fine, I’ll go and get my shotgun and sort the problem out myself” and found two officers pounding up his garden path a couple of minutes later
I got my set of cameras precisely because a work colleague caught some conniving crims with the video from his. The police were delighted to see his footage, which was sufficiently clear to lead directly to two successful prosecutions.
Getting the police to do anything more than issue you a crime number for your insurance is extremely unlikely, unless the thieves have attacked someone or are being restrained by you.
Motion sensor lights are a decent deterrent. If you can figure out how to make them trigger a recording of a large dog barking, even better.
Doorbell cameras are only really useful for when you’re at home.
Going overboard with alarms and cameras might give the impression that you’ve got lots of stuff that’s worth nicking.
I was most impressed by the local police when, about 18 months ago, both cars were taken from the drive. We didn’t have video doorbells then (we do now!) but by using a combination of the black box installed in my wife’s car for insurance purposes and neighbours’ camera footage (both CCTV and doorbell they managed to catch the little wanker. He’s now in prison.
Ring and a couple of solar movement sensor activated lights does for us now. Suitable deterrent, it seems.
How did they get two cars? Key reader?
They’d broken into the porch where, because we used to be more innocent and foolish, we still kept the car keys.
First responder was a guy from Forensics who asked me if I knew of anywhere locally (wooded areas/waste ground) where cars might have been taken to be stripped down for parts. I don’t think he’d really grasped what sort of an arts and crafts, soft handed luvvie he was dealing with…
According to an ex copper I used to know, thieves will look for places where they have the least chance of being seen coming in or out, and some expectation of finding stuff worth nicking. Laptops, iPads, phones, cash, jewelery, watches even booze (and guitars) are easily nicked and readily sold.
Her advice – forget about alarms, and install as many motion sensitive lights as you can afford or the neighbours will tolerate, and make sure they work. If you have an accessible rear entrance [ stop it] make sure that’s lit as well, and remove any bushes, trees etc that might provide cover to work under. Make sure there’s no way of reaching upper windows from the ground floor by standing on walls, ladders, garden tables / chairs etc. She reckoned break ins were far more common from the back of the house than the front as there’s far less chance of being seen or disturbed. If the house is often empty in the evenings / overnight, invest in some timers and get them to come on / off at sensible times.
The next step is to fortify doors and windows so that they can resist attention long enough to persuade a toe rage to look elsewhere. If your house has an integral garage that can be where the locks are the weakest. Apparently the things most likely to put deter the light fingered are a) someone in the house b) a dog c) a car on the drive d) bright lights.
We moved into a house in the 80s and found out soon after that the previous owners had been burgled multiple times. You could see why…it was below street level and high hedges hid the property from view. They also had zero window locks. So I cut down the hedges and fitted locks and we had no problems.
We have a Ring doorbell and 3 cameras – one aimed at the back gate, one in the garden office and one in the conservatory. Other than the doorbell, the cameras are only on motion sense when we leave the house. They record to the cloud so we have 30 days footage. The outside camera is attached to a solar panel which keeps the battery fully topped up even in winter.
We also have a couple of PIR sensor lights by the garden doors.
We also have a dog but she is super friendly…
Interesting Times article about this the other day. Basically, according to the criminology boffins and home security pros, Ring cameras and alarms are “wealth cues” which attract rather than deter burglars. Plus, they’ll just wear balaclavas anyway, and alarms are ignored by neighbours unless they go on all night, by which time the crims are long gone – the average burglary is over in 8-10 minutes.
The best deterrents are secure window locks, internal and external lights on timers and sensors, double door locks and deadlocks.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/996a2d8a-53f1-11ee-bc18-cbdd58145dc6?shareToken=b8dd2ea9a1db4d1e8cd46af1bdbdc761
Yes I read that too. Interesting.
I find the ‘no barbed wire’ comment ludicrous, if taken at face value. 40,000 volts from our electric fence charger should do the trick, even barb-free. But ‘no barbed wire’? Really? When farmers are free to fence off Public Rights Of Way with the most agressively barbed stuff they can lay their hands on? Sod that for advice. So sue me when you cut yourself or tear your black balaclava trying to scale my garden walls. It’s not made clear, but perhaps the officer in question had his tongue in his cheek, I do hope so!
I’m curious how much of a problem this is as it all seems very foreign to me.
Where I live (Japan), some people go out leaving their houses unlocked, ground level windows are left open at night (I do that without any kind of worry), and stuff like bikes and other valuables can be left outside without worrying they’ll disappear.
I never hear of any burglaries, so I can only presume it is rare.
I suppose this kind of thing is one of the reason why I love living in Japan.
I’m not going to tell you exactly where I live (somewhere in NZ) but my experience is the same as yours.
In the summertime, I come home and all the doors are wide open – and no-one has been in the house for hours.
Not even which town or city? Are you scared Afterworders will descend on your town looking for someone who goes by the name of @Black-Celebration ? 😉
I thought the same about Canada but it looks like per population it is a similar rate to the UK.it is also declining, I think because other forms of crime are on the rise, scams, internet crime etc
@dai – we have some really shifty characters on this forum, so I have to be careful. Don’t tell them I said that though.
Oh gosh… I really do hope I’m not one of those, Black Celebration!
🙂
(I promise to try and hold back on my DM thoughts in future).
It’s good to hear there are other places where such things aren’t even considered.
They know who they are….
@napaj, you care about Depeche Mode and that means you’re OK by me.
🙂
I would love to visit NZ one day, I promise I won’t come looking for you…
That’s exactly the sort of thing someone on their way round to your house would say.
The stats show a steady decrease, and an enormous decrease overall, in the last 20 years. As pointed out above there is cynicism about whether an overstretched police force can do much about it, so it is likely some aren’t reported as doing so might only be useful to get a crime number for insurance.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/956906/burglaries-in-england-and-wales/
It’s not common here other than in dense city environments and almost always it’s people looking for cash. No one steals TVs, stereos, laptops etc. They just aren’t worth the hassle of selling. So we were told by the cops who popped in. If you have a desirable car they’ll go for that but my late 2010 Honda is many things but desirable isn’t one of them.
I had a basement flat in a red light district, and I’d lived there for 3 years with no issues until my flat was burgled. The low-life scum were in such a hurry to exit the place quickly that when they yanked at the stereo units – turntable, amp, tuner and cassette deck – they couldn’t get them out fast enough because all the mains plugs were trapped by the shelving. They instead stole my SLR camera, my guitar and a nice old mains FM radio – oh, and a knock-off Rubik’s Cube – twenty quid’s worth max probably at one of Bristol’s less fussy 2nd hand furniture stores.
I moved out shortly after, into my girlfriend’s flat. I went back another two weeks later to see if any mail had arrived for me since I left. The poor chap who moved in after me had put his own stereo system where mine had been, but hadn’t been bothered to remove the mains plugs and re-attach them once the kit was all in place. The toe-rags had come back a fortnight after he moved in and had the lot.
I read that there is an increased chance of being robbed again after one burglary as they spot interesting stuff, find a buyer then come back for it. I’m all up for self aiming shotguns personally.
40+ years of living in flats in inner city Stockholm, but no experiences of burglaries ever here (not my flat, not my neighbours, not any of my friends or family members living in the city). Only burglaries have been in storage units in the building’s basements, but last time that happened was probably ten years ago. Most people only keep a lot of junk in their units anyway, and seasonal decorations etc. Not saying it never happens, but less and less common I believe. Growing up in a residential suburb however, our house alone was burglared three times, being on a dead end street with a nature park surrounding two sides of our garden.
What I find fascinating is that people often leave unlocked bikes, prams, etc, on the pavements in the area I live in now, and I pass them late at night when coming home from work and think “that will be nicked by the morning”, but they’re still there days and sometimes weeks later (and when finally gone, I guess it could be because the owner collected it, or someone just cleared it away because it was in the way).
As others have said, I think it’s just not profitable, so many other crimes to go for to make the big bucks these days, drugs and scams and fancy watch robberies… (and not least the professional bastards stealing enormous amounts of expensive meat, fish, coffee etc from supermarkets, as I know well because I work in one…you can’t leave the expensive stuff out in the counters anymore because they arrive with huge bags and empty them out in seconds – a pox on the restaurant owners who buy these stolen goods, they are the ones creating a market for it!)
I have six Ring cameras installed at my Mother’s house and four at my own. They work seamlessly and were very easy to set up. They have different purposes at each location. As my mother is now on her own, the cameras at her place let me monitor any nocturnal activities around her house and give her a heads-up. As I’ve explained to her, simply turning the light on and stomping around the house will likely repel any intruders. I can also talk via the cameras and sound a siren.
My place is semi-rural and I’m essentially the last house in a three km long dead-end valley. Ours is a narrow, winding road with several culverts over the creek. If someone breaks into my place I can call one of several people up the road to park their car strategically and block the road completely. Unless they have a chopper there is literally no other way out of the valley except on foot up some very steep slopes.
If you assume locks etc are adequate, then Ring is decent option.
We had that installed when I needed to upgrade home security after terminating an employee with gun issues. HR isn’t all muffins you know.
Terminating an employee with gun issues? Why? In case his relatives had similar issues?
@retropath2
Just as long as he didn’t get fired
He was known to threaten random people and discuss the nature of damage the different caliber of bullets would do. Throw in stalking a female colleague, and I had to fire him.
So that was a fun process.
Don’t panic!
Follówing Tory MP for Whohe, Chris Philip’s call for the public to stop shoplifters because police can’t be everywhere, it’s surely only a matter of time before Tony Martin is appointed Home Invasion Czar
Latest proposal from our caring, sharing government’s party conference is merging the passport and driving licence photo databases with the police’s mugshot database.
Yes the surveillance society is upon us.
They’ll then be able to find extra reasons to lock more of us up, while investing in/taking directorships of companies like Group 4 and Serco. “Trebles all round”, as Faux-y liked to say.