Last week, we shared some valuable Security Measures for Holiday Shopping Season. In that post, we provided a wide variety of security solutions for online shoppers during this time of year. This week, we shift our focus to help those traveling over the holidays. From late November through early January, many of us will make trips to visit friends and family that leave our homes vacant. Of course, thieves know this, and they take extra care to note any evidence of empty homes that they can spot over this time. That makes this otherwise joyous part of the year a difficult one from a security perspective. In today’s post, we provide some valuable tips to help with securing your home during holiday travel!
First, we’ll share some best practices for allowing trusted neighbors to help create additional security during your travels. From there, we’ll detail some mail-related security tips to help you disguise the fact that you have a vacant home. Then, we’ll share some tips for adding security through the use of unique equipment. Specifically, we’ll focus on adding smart security products that can both add security in your absence and make your home look occupied during your travels. We’ll then shift our focus to adding life safety with the use of monitored smoke and carbon monoxide detection. Finally, we’ll also review the use of environmental sensors to alert you to weather-related security issues within your home before they turn into destructive and expensive disasters. Now, let’s dive in and see how your neighbors can help with securing your home during holiday travel.
Ask Trusted Neighbors for Security Assistance
Sometimes, the best security comes from those who can keep an eye on your vacant home. Telling your trusted neighbors about your travel plans allows them to stay extra vigilant in watching your home for you. Additionally, consider asking neighbors to occasionally park a car in your driveway. Doing so will give the house less of an “abandoned” look during an extended absence. Furthermore, ask anyone you’d trust with a key to occasionally stop inside the house as well. This adds both security and valuable peace mind during your travels! If you have someone checking in on the house, you can rest assured that “no news means good news.” Next, let’s look at how you can get proactive with mail delivery during holiday vacations.
The presence of mail beginning to pile up in mailboxes advertises an empty home to potential burglars.
Get Proactive to in Thwarting Mail-Related Security Threats
More than anything else, burglars want to get in and out of their victims’ homes without any confrontation. This minimizes the chances of getting caught and even hurt or killed by someone inside. Additionally, physical confrontations with residents can add additional criminal charges to the initial burglary. Therefore, burglars often look for signs of an empty home before committing a crime. An increasing pile of mail outside a home represents a popular telltale sign of a vacant home. Therefore, we encourage travelers to take a couple steps to prevent this from occurring.
For starters, travelers should ask the post office to hold their mail during their trips. Doing so will prevent holiday greeting cards and other mail from piling up and advertising the fact that you are away. Furthermore, we recommend, again, using your neighbors to help with this process. Non-USPS deliveries, such as Amazon and UPS packages, may still arrive. Having neighbors grab these for you can help keep your home from appearing empty. Of course, it also lowers the temptation for people to steal your packages! At this point, it’s worth taking a look at some security products that can help thwart exactly this type of activity.
Use Smart Home Appliances to Your Advantage
For the past several years, we’ve championed adding smart home devices to enhance home security. In particular, our Alarm.com doorbell camera comes in handy this time of year. This camera sends a live video clip to your phone when it detects motion. This means that the arrival of packages — or both invited and uninvited guests — will prompt this live video feed. Furthermore, you can talk and listen through the doorbell camera as well. This allows you to give instructions to those delivering mail. Of course, it also lets you convince anyone who might take your packages that you are inside and don’t need their assistance!
We offer additional security-related smart home appliances as well. For example, smart locks allow you to grant entry to house sitters without the use of a key. Smart lights provide the ability to make it look like you’re at home by having lights turn on using either consistent or randomized schedules. Smart cameras even allow you to efficiently monitor the interior and exterior of your property. For more ideas on adding smart home security, check out our 7 Important Security Add-Ons for Your Smart Home. Last but certainly not least, let’s now see how adding monitored fire and environmental detection adds a profoundly important dose of holiday travel security.
Add Security Through Monitored Fire and Environmental Detection
At Northeast Security Solutions, we consider monitored security against smoke, heat, carbon monoxide, and environmental emergencies among the most important security that money can buy. We regularly install smoke, heat, and carbon monoxide (or “CO”) detectors when we install an alarm system. Ideally, we install this security during a home’s construction. This allows us to create a complete hardwired system in all of a home’s required locations for this equipment. You may remember our post sharing Residential Smoke Alarm Requirements in Massachusetts. In that post, we shared the legal requirements for smoke, heat, and CO detection in homes in this state. If we can install this equipment before you put your walls up, it provides the easiest access for us to create a full system comprised of monitored detectors. However, we can still install wireless devices after your home’s construction as well.
This wireless freeze flood sensor by Interlogix can alert you to both frozen pipes or water in your basement.
Additionally, we can install devices to monitor against weather-related emergencies. These sensors, called “environmental sensors,” detect events such as floods and extreme temperatures due to frozen pipes or malfunctioning HVAC equipment. The ability to detect these events before they turn in to a disaster can greatly enhance your holiday travel security. Additionally, we often surprise customers withe how easily we can add this security. For example, the pictured wireless sensor detects both water and extreme temperatures! The simplicity of adding this security, as well as the huge potential savings of cost and effort that they create if they do catch an event before it turns into a disaster, make these sensors a popular addition to any alarm panel.
Putting it All Together and Securing Your Home During Holiday Travel
We hope that this post aid you in securing your home during holiday travel this year. If you have any questions about this post or about security in general, we encourage you to contact us. The holidays provide unique security threats due to the increased giving of valuable electronic gifts, the frequent presence of tempting packages on our doorsteps, and, of course, the travel plans that many of us make during this time of year. In order to help you combat these threats, we will happily answer any and all security questions that you may have.
Additionally, we encourage you to take advantage of our free site survey program. We provide free site surveys for both new and existing customers alike. During our visit, we can address any security concerns you may have. Furthermore, we can make suggestions of our own based on what we see while onsite. Perhaps you have some security measures in place, but wish to beef up your security for the holidays. Or, maybe you have very little in the way of security equipment at the moment, and wish to get started from the ground up. Either way, we are here to help. Together, we can create a complete security plan to keep you, your valuables, and your family as safe and secure as possible over the holidays and all year round!