Securing Your Shed with Alarm Equipment

Over our 38 years in business, we’ve helped over a thousand customers create security plans for their property. In doing so, we aim to secure their homes against the risk of burglary, life safety-related events such as fires and carbon monoxide, and even weather-related events such as flooding and dangerously low temperatures. Furthermore, we often surprise customers by creating solutions for both interior and exterior security to help keep their entire property safe. In particular, sheds often hold valuable tools, bikes, motor vehicles, and other valuable equipment. Unfortunately, these areas of a property often receive the least security, despite their relative isolation and ease of entry. Today, we aim to help you fix this conundrum. In this post, we’ll show you how we can aid in securing your shed with alarm equipment!

First, we’ll share how you can add wireless security to your shed using long-distance wireless sensors. The recent ability to add these sensors far away from your home has greatly increased our alarms’ effectiveness over the last few years. From there, we’ll detail another important wireless security measure in the form of monitored smoke and heat detection. Adding this security can actually save your shed and anything inside it during a fire emergency! Finally, we’ll wrap up our post with a look at Alarm.com’s new “Flex IO” sensor that we can install anywhere with cellular service, regardless of the distance to your home. Now, let’s dive in and see how we can start securing your shed with wireless alarm devices.

Add Wireless Security Contacts on Doors and Windows

Recent alarm technology has made it easier than ever to secure even the farthest reaches of your property. However, until recently, securing sheds and even attached garages proved troublesome. Standard wireless security contacts have limited range to begin with, and over time, their range diminishes. This can lead to frustration, as alarm contacts lose communication with their security system panels. In these instances, homeowners must deal with frequent trouble signals from their alarm systems. Furthermore, they also have to deal with a lack of security wherever these contacts are installed.

Fortunately, recent technology improvements have allowed us more flexibility with the installation of wireless sensors. Some security system manufacturers, including QOLSYS, our preferred system provider, have created long-range “Power G” wireless door and window sensors. This allows us to secure doors and windows that even a few short years ago we wouldn’t have secured.

In the past, securing a detached garage or shed often meant installing a second security system. The ability to add alarm sensors to the doors and windows of your detached shed and garage means that you will always know if someone opens these doors in your absence. Just as importantly, a breach into any part of your property will also produce a police response if needed. At this point, we’ve looked at a couple ideas for keeping the wrong people out of your shed or garage. Next up, let’s look at securing your shed with alarm equipment designed for other types of emergencies.

Install Monitored Smoke and Heat Detection

As we touched upon earlier, we connect the alarms we install to our monitoring service. In doing so, we make sure that our central station responds to any alarm activations. Up an activation, our central station dispatchers can call the premises to check on the situation. If necessary, they can even dispatch the proper authorities to your home! Obviously, this adds quite a bit of security and peace of mind for our customers. When most of our customers think about this service, they think about it in terms of burglary-related security. Of course, this represents an extremely important aspect of what these systems offer. Thieves coming through doors or windows activate door sensors and motion detectors that activate your alarm’s siren, set the monitoring response in motion, and get the police to your property.

However, burglar security only represents a small portion of what these alarms can accomplish. In addition to watching over your home for criminal activity, they can also provide a valuable measure of life safety as well. We offer monitored smoke and CO detection that can alert you to the presence of a fire or carbon monoxide-related emergency in your home. More importantly, these devices also create a fire department dispatch to stop a fire in its tracks. Fortunately, we offer the same Power G technology for this monitored life safety equipment as we do for the burglary equipment described above. This gives you a powerful tool to aid in securing your shed! Now, let’s see how smart cameras can create effective and efficient shed security as well.

Use Smart Cameras to Keep an Eye on Your Entire Property

Residential surveillance can add shed and garage security in multiple ways. For one, cameras give you a live look at your property at all times. Some cameras, such as Alarm.com smart cameras, will even send you a live video alert upon detecting motion. We install these cameras for our alarm customers who take advantage of our interactive cellular monitoring powered by Alarm.com. These cameras record motion-based clips viewable from any smart device or computer. We also offer stand-alone surveillance that utilizes a dedicated recorder. Generally, this recorder captures video continuously and can store it for several weeks. No matter where your surveillance needs lie, either type of system will give you both live and recorded footage of any events around your home, shed, or garage.

Additionally, cameras bring with them a crime-fighting element. We discussed this in our post detailing Steps to Take to Defeat Smart Criminals. That post pointed out that criminals often cite cameras as one of the biggest deterrent to attempting a break-in. A visible surveillance presence can encourage burglars to look elsewhere for their next target. Let’s now turn our attention to one of the latest and greatest pieces of alarm technology on the market today!

Take Advantage of Unique Alarm.com-Based Security

When it comes to developing the latest and greatest in unique security innovation, Alarm.com sits at the very top of the industry. In addition to the smart cameras we discussed in the previous section, we’ve also started utilizing Alarm.com’s new Flex IO security device. Unlike the Power G sensors we detailed earlier, which use a radio frequency to communicate to your alarm panel, the Flex IO sensor uses cellular data to communicate with you directly. This allows us to install this device even in extremely remote areas of your property. Many homeowners have storage sheds on their property that offer absolutely no line of sight to  their homes. Now, we can monitor activity in buildings that sit acres away from your home (and each other) with this unique solution. As you can see, this new addition to our security portfolio adds uniquely flexible exterior and shed security.

Putting it All Together and Securing Your Shed

We hope that these tips for securing your shed with alarm equipment serve you well in securing your own property. As always, we encourage you to contact us with any questions this post may raise for you. We will happily answer any and all of your security-related inquiries. Additionally, we also invite you to take advantage of our free site survey program. We’ve long offered complimentary security audits and equipment quotes to both new and existing customers alike. While on site, we can help you find solutions for your existing security concerns, both inside and out. Moreover, we can make suggestions of our own based on observations of your home and yard. Together, we can help you create a complete security plan to keep your entire property — as well as your family — as safe and secure as possible!