How to Secure Your Home to Prevent Invasion

When a person is standing out on your porch this is your first opportunity to make sure that they can't hurt you or your family. Protecting your family starts with strengthening your home against home invasion. Now home invasion doesn't have to actively mean multiple people trying to break through your barricades, but it absolutely could mean that. So having real barricades, having real security, having a strengthened and reinforced entryway, for example, is a great place to start. We're also going to look at having a barricade area inside of our home that can also be reinforced to protect us from someone who's already made it inside.

And the first thing you're going to see when you approach this home is a gate. This gate is actually both a storm door, a screen door, and part of the security of the home. You can still leave the door open during the summer and get the breeze and get the fresh air, but there is actually a reinforced steel door with a steel frame here. And as you can see, while this has an older type deadlock it even does have the deadbolt throw. It's got the two double keyed entryways there.

We've got a good solid metal throw here and it's even protected from being worked on so that someone would have a hard time being able to break through there, because this is actually part of the reinforced steel door. So a good screen door might be the first thing that tells a bad guy, Wow. If they've got this kind of screen door they're probably pretty serious about their security. Maybe I'll go look for an easier target. If they do decide to try to get into this target they're going to have to fight their way through this before they even get to the main entryway door.

And when it comes to the interior entryway this is your gatekeeper. This is really what's going to keep you away from everyone who's outside and keep your family safe. It also is going to send a message to everybody on the outside that you take your security seriously. You want to obviously make sure that you have a deadbolt. Now, this particular door has both an old style double key deadbolt and a newer, which is what I recommend, throw activated where you actually have a handle here, and then you only have the keyed entry on the other side.

And when we look at this deadbolt, we see that it comes out and it isn't just out half an inch or so, there's actually some good penetration that's going to go into the frame. We always want to make sure that we have a good reinforced frame around our external door. When we think about looking at our security this door has to be solid. It has to either be metal skinned or at least a good, heavy, solid wood door without a lot of panels that can be kicked through. The entryway door's incredibly important and of course your lock system and the way it integrates with the frame is a big part of that.

Another thing that we want to look at when it comes to our exterior door is the peep hole. Now you notice there's not a big piece of glass here. There's not a lot of glass around the door. Of course those big pieces of glass or a glass front door can be broken through. Then someone can just reach around and throw your deadbolt.

So you want to have a peep hole that allows you through a good solid door without a lot of glass around it that can be broken or compromised. You want to be able to look through and identify who is out there on your porch. Now that's obviously not for a time when someone's banging on the door saying they want to kill you. If you've identified the fact that there's a threat out there that means you and your family harm, you're not going to come over here and look at them. You're not going to need to identify them through the peep hole.

If someone rings the doorbell however, just because they were polite does not necessarily mean they're not a threat. So when someone knocks at your door and rings that doorbell you don't want to just walk up and start unlocking and opening up your house. You want to look out, identify them, see exactly who they are and make sure it's someone that you want to allow through these barricades that you've taken the time and effort and investment to actually keep up and make sure that your family is safe. Now, the trick is this. If you look out and someone's been knocking and you don't see them, ask them to step in front of the door.

If they don't, you already know that you have a threat. The exterior door, the screen door, your hardware, and the peep hole all work together to keep people outside of your home, but let's take a look at what happens if someone's already in your home and you need a place to barricade and keep yourself safe. Now, when it comes to an interior barricade the idea is you want to be able to do more than just shut a normal hollow-core interior door, like a bedroom door would be, without much hardware that's really going to protect you. So, as you can see here we've installed an actual key deadbolt. The kind that you would put normally on an exterior door.

We have a solid door instead of a hollow one, so it can't just be punched through or pushed through. We have a reinforced frame and we put this in. Now putting one of these in isn't very hard. You can buy kits. You can come right here in about 15 or 20 minutes, install a good, solid, door, deadbolt lock that's going to allow you to be much safer inside of your barricade area.

If nothing else, this is at least going to delay the person who's trying to hurt you or your family, while you get your family behind you, while you get to make your 911 call, while you get your firearm in hand and prepare for that worst case scenario where you have to defend yourself. Being able to run in, slam the door, turn that throw and get that deadbolt engaged is going to make you much safer. You want to have not only a good exterior entryway but also a good interior barricade. Strengthening your home against home invasion is an important part of your preparation. Just being ready to fight isn't enough.

Try to avoid the fight or at least delay it as long as possible.