Remain Diligent about Home Security This Winter
Regular readers of our blog posts know that we frequently offer security tips designed to help our customers be as safe as they can be. In this post, we want to address the idea of remaining diligent about home security throughout the winter season. Temperatures may be falling along with the snow, but your home security needs will not change all that much. You still need to be diligent about protecting yourself against real and perceived security threats.
The three most common threats in the home security arena are burglary/home invasion, fire and carbon monoxide poisoning. Let’s look at each one situations in light of how the winter season affects them.
Burglary and Home Invasion
Although the evidence is not concrete, annual crime statistics seem to suggest that burglaries and home invasions go down during the winter months. We suspect that might be due to people wanting to stay indoors once the weather turns cold. Nonetheless, burglars still need to ‘make a living’. The big difference with winter is that changing weather makes the life of the burglar more difficult.
Bear in mind that most burglaries occur during the daylight hours when residents are at work and school. Shorter days during the winter means that burglars have less time to do what they do, so they want to work faster. Therefore, be just as diligent about protecting your home in winter as you would in summer, taking into account the shorter days of the season. Make sure your doors remain locked, make sure nothing is blocking the view of your home from the street, and install a DIY wireless home security system if you do not already have one.
House Fires
House fires are a problem all year round, but they tend to spike in the winter due to the use of alternative heating sources. We recommend you to use caution if you plan to operate a fireplace, wood-burning stove, or kerosene heating system. Fireplace owners should have their chimneys inspected for creosote buildup. The same goes for wood-burning stoves.
House fires caused by candle use are also more likely to occur during the winter months. Please practice responsible candle burning by never leaving candles unattended, never placing burning candles near flammable materials, and never trusting children to use candles on their own. If you do not have fire monitoring included in your home security package, now would be a good time to add it.
Carbon Monoxide Poisoning
The winter heating season is the busy season for carbon monoxide poisoning. Unfortunately, carbon monoxide can be a silent killer inasmuch as it has no odor or color. The best thing you can do after installing carbon monoxide monitors in your home is to educate yourself on the symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning. Knowing what the symptoms are will give you a leg up should you be unfortunate enough to be exposed to dangerous levels of carbon monoxide.
As a reminder, never attempt to heat the inside of your home with a propane heater, gas oven, or outdoor grill. All three emit dangerous levels of carbon dioxide that can quickly kill.
Uxari wants you to have a safe and enjoyable winter. We urge you to be just as diligent about your home security this season as you would during the summer. The stronger your safety-first mindset, the safer you will actually be over the next few months. If you do not yet have a wireless home security system installed, now would be a good time to consider it. Our security systems include monitoring for burglary and fire.
