6 Tips to Make Your Garage Extra Safe

A few smart ways to secure your garage and reduce risks for your family and property

Sometimes it is easy for Colorado homeowners to overlook their garage when taking home security measures, and thieves are aware of this. Making sure that your garage is a safe place is essential to keep its valuable contents safe, but most importantly, if you have an attached garage (like most modern homes do), breaking into it means a thieve can have access to the rest of your home!

1) Alarm the garage door

If you have a home security system, don’t forget to include the garage door! It may be tempting to leave the garage door un-alarmed either by accident, naïveness or to avoid having to deal with its additional hassle. But with the right alarm system, it is easy to line up your garage door with an entry sensor and include it in your protection plan.

If your budget doesn’t allow for a comprehensive alarm system, you can also use a standalone door monitoring system. These are wall-mounted devices that can sync to your smartphone via an app, which will tell you if the garage door was left open or if there is any suspicious activity going on.

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2) Install motion-sensing lights

Additionally, outdoor motion-sensing lights are a natural deterrent for unwanted guests. They work by detecting moving objects with infrared waves and are especially responsive to warm ones such as cars, animals and people.

3) Make it hard to see through

The easiest way to tell if someone is home is by seeing their car in the driveway or the garage. No car usually means that there are no adults in the house. Large windows on your homefront or garage door can also make it easy for thieves to check what’s inside and lure them in. So this doesn’t mean you need to get rid of the windows and the natural light they provide, but you can make it harder for outsiders to see through by using blinds, curtains, or you can obscure the view but let light in with translucent contact paper.

4) Put a timer on the door

If you or anyone in your family is the forgetful type, you may want to consider getting an automatic garage door closer that operates on a timer. After a pre-programmed number of minutes, the door will automatically shut!

Garage Door Opener opening a residential garage door.

5) Update your garage door opener and remote

If your car is broken into and the remote door opener is mounted on the visor, the burglar can now open your garage with the click of a button, as long as they know where you live at least.  So a better option can be to use a keychain remote instead.

It is also good to think about upgrading your old technologies that can be easily compromised because older garage door remotes use the same code signal every time. A “code grabber” is easy to obtain and can be used to copy your remote’s code, allowing thieves to open your garage on command. There are newer garage door openers that use a “rolling code” technology, which provides a new code with every use and are very hard to copy; and others that can work with your smartphone in conjunction with your home’s wireless Internet network. Contact us for guidance and a Free Estimate for your new garage door opener in Denver!

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6) Reinforce the Garage Door and other structures

No matter the other security measures, if your garage door is weak, it offers little protection. When checking your current door, consider its materials, age, and style. Metal doors are generally stronger than wooden ones, but thin, old rusting metal will be less reliable than a thick wooden door in proper conditions; however, wood can rot and warp. Also, older fiberglass can break down and get brittle with UV exposure, even if it appears whole.

If you find any irregularity in your garage door’s performance and don’t have the tools, knowledge or time to do it yourself, that’s what we are here for! Our highly trained staff can give you a diagnostic of every single detail of your residential or commercial garage door in the Denver area.

Check and replace any damaged weather stripping and surrounding hardware and pay attention to the opening mechanisms. If the lock or latch is failing or weak, it can easily be compromised. Other structural details can also affect your door’s security. Does it have windows? Can they be broken? If so, consider replacing them or reinforcing them by adding bars.

Call for a FREE Garage Door Estimate at (303) 776-DOOR (3667)!

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