Every year, we help homeowners secure their homes based on unique seasonal security challenges. For example, when the weather gets cold, we often work with customers to address potential seasonal issues. These threats affect all of our customers. However, many of the families that we work with have even greater security concerns over the winter. Couples or families that vacation for the entire winter must create a long-term security plan to ensure they return to their home without experiencing any security “hickups” in the meantime. In this post, we share some of our top security tips for snow birds.
First, we’ll look at some general security tips to help you prepare for your trip this year. From there, we’ll also examine some equipment that you can install to add security to your home in your absence. This includes both burglary and weather-related equipment. Moreover, it also includes valuable monitored fire-detecting equipment that creates a central station-created check-in from the local fire department. Finally, we’ll also share some tips for securing your vacation home and tying multiple homes’ security equipment together. We’ve worked with many owners of multiple homes to take simple steps to simplify their home security systems. Now, let’s dive in with a focus on how to set yourself up for success before traveling this year.
Preparing for Your Trip
Before setting forth on your long-term absence, make arrangements to have your home checked on by trusted friends, neighbors, or family members. Additionally, consider having others park a car in your driveway occsasionally and even check inside your home to check on your home’s “vitals,” such as running water and a stable temperature. Of course, having people do this provides valuable peace of mind and security in case something does happen. Furthermore, this also acts as a deterrent, since burglars try to scope out homes with extended periods of no activity. In addition to having extra eyes on your home, one of our top security tips for snow birds involves installing security equipment to keep your home safe. Next up, let’s take a look at doing just that.
Security Equipment to Keep Your Home Safe
In addition to following some basic security tips, we also offer equipment to help you achieve long-term home security in your absence. In this section, we’ll focus on this equipment from a couple different angles. First, we’ll see how you can help secure your home against burglary and environment-related emergencies. From there, we’ll also examine ways to minimize the chances of a fire causing major damage to your home.
Our monitored alarm customers experience the security of both a siren response and an emergency police dispatch upon your system detecting a breach.
Burglary and Environmental Security
Installing a home security system (often called a “burglar alarm” or simply an “alarm”) has many security benefits. For starters, these systems create a blaring siren response to detecting a breach. This alerts anyone onsite — and sometimes even anyone nearby if you install exterior sirens — to the situation. In turn, this response often scares intruders away from the premises. In fact, the mere sight of an alarm sign and a company’s alarm stickers can cause a burglar to avoid attempting a break-in altogether. Of course, this represents the ideal scenario when it comes to home security. Moreover, a monitored alarm also creates an added level of security. Alarm customers who take advantage of our security monitoring services also receive an added benefit to installing a security system. This service connects your alarm to our central station. In turn, this provides an emergency dispatch when necessary.
Of course, the events that our central station respond to include a breach of any burglary-related security equipment we install. Additionally, we also offer equipment that picks up on other potential issues in your home. For example, we can install water-detecting sensors that can alert you to flood conditions at your house. Furthermore, we also install low-temperature detection that can create a central station response to dangerous conditions in your home. These sensors allow you to get someone out to check on the situation in your absence. In our next section, we’ll detail another type of alarm equipment that helps secure you against a potential disaster while you are away from home.
Fire Safety and Security
In addition to the common threats listed above, we also encourage customers to secure their homes against fires. Of course, you can accomplish some of this with following some best practices before you leave for your travels. For example, testing and cleaning HVAC equipment, including giving your heaters a dusting, can help lower the risk of experiencing a fire. Additionally, making sure to clear the areas around your heaters of curtains and furniture can also help.
Additionally, we also regularly install monitored smoke and carbon monoxide-detecting equipment in customers’ homes. This greatly lowers the chance of a catastrophic even bringing down your home in your absence. Installing these devices ensures a fire department dispatch upon detection of a fire in your home. This can save your home during your winter weather-avoiding travels.
As an added bonus, installing all of the equipment described in this section can lead to insurance breaks. Providers will often discount premiums based on the presence of monitored burglary, environmental, and fire-detecting equipment in your home. This combination of added security and money back in your pocket can make installing this equipment a no-brainer! Next up, let’s turn our attention to securing a vacation home, in addition to your full-time house.
Securing a Vacation Home
Of course, our security tips for snow birds would not be complete without also taking vacation home security in mind. After all, many winter travelers own the homes that they travel to in the winter. Obviously, many of the same tips you’ve seen here apply to securing those homes as well. Installing monitored burglar, environmental, and fire detection provide fantastic security for your second homes.
Alarm.com allows you to control and check the status of alarm systems at multiple locations through one easy-to-use smartphone app.
Additionally, we also offer a nice way to tie your homes’ security measures together. When we monitor an alarm system, we have a few options to create a connection between your alarm and our central station. Our preffered method involves installing a cellular dialer, such as ours powered by Alarm.com. Doing so creates a few security benefits. For one, these dialers use a cellular network to call out for help. Therefore, phone line outages do not effect your monitoring at all.
Additionally, our Alarm.com customers can also take advantage of “interactive” security monitoring. This service allows you to control and receive alerts from your security systems using the Alarm.com smartphone app. This proves especially helpful for creating security for winter travelers. Alarm.com’s easy user interface lets you manage security for multiple properties at once, and with ease! For more information, check out our post on Multiple-Property Security with Alarm.com.
Putting Our Security Tips for Snow Birds to Work for You
We hope that these security tips for snow birds help you stay safe and secure during your travels! Moreover, we also encourage you to contact us with any questions you may have about the material presented here. We will happily answer any and all of your security-related inquiries. Furthermore, we also invite you to take advantage of our free site survey program. We offer complimentary security audits to both new and existing customers alike. While on site, we can address any existing security concerns you may have. Additionally, we can also create suggestions based on our own observations made during our visit.
Perhaps you already have some of these measures in place, but wish to bulk up your security during your travels this year. Or, maybe you have very little in the way of security now, and want to build a security plan from the ground up. Either way, we are here to help. Together, we can create a complete plan to keep your home as safe and secure as possible, both during your winter travels and all year long as well!