Have Yourself A Smart, Secure Christmas

home security, secure, alarm, christmas preparationsFor many of us Christmas means a long car ride to see relatives back home or entertaining them in your house for a few days. Many people dread it, many relish it. Many also use the holiday season as an excuse to get away somewhere warm instead of facing another cold, wet, windy week of enforced joviality and sociability.And of you’re lucky enough to be one of those people who are going to be jetting off to sun, sea, sand and sangria (or a yogic retreat, nobody’s judging), you need to ensure that your home is properly prepared. Not long ago boosting your security would be leaving some lights on and asking a neighbour to bring the mail in and look after the cat. Today much of your home prep can be done automatically so you always know exactly what’s going on at home wherever you are in the world.

Managing your home remotely isn’t only for Christmas, although it does take a huge burden off during the most wonderful time of the year. The great thing about home automation is that there is so much you can do with it that rather than being worrisome, you can relax knowing that if anything does happen it won’t happened without your knowing about it.

Before You Go Away

Firstly, if you’re leaving your house unattended for more than a day or two it may be necessary to make sure that the pipes don’t burst, or your goldfish freeze. In that case a Smart thermostat is a handy item to have attached to the central heating system. With a smart thermostat you can decide which rooms need heating without having to get down to all the valves every time you want to adjust a particular radiator. Instead you can do it simply from a control panel or app, and you can control the temperature far more subtly.

Secure Against All Kinds Of Emergency

The fact that your thermostat is smart means it will detect by itself when you’re away and essentially go to ‘standby’ or ‘threshold settings’ by itself. If you’re going away for longer, a few weeks say, it may be necessary to check what the lowest settings are, but if you forget, you can always do it remotely. Read more

Home Security While You’re Enjoying A Vacation

girl phone beach internet accessSummer’s here and as August turns to September it’s the perfect time to jet away to the Mediterranean, Europe or America for a holiday and return in time to pack the kids off to school.

But who is keeping their eye on your home while you’re away?

If it’s your neighbours, that’s fine. Neighbourhood Watch schemes are a great way for a community to look out for one another, working together to make our towns and cities safer places.

However, if it’s not the nice neighbours but the bad, that’s not such good news.

Burglars have been found to typically stay within a few miles of their own homes, and typically strike during the hours of daylight.

The reasons for these habits among housebreakers are logical when you think about it. While the expression has it “a fox doesn’t make a mess on its own doorstep” a burglar will. It’s not that they lack the common sense not to steal from their neighbours because they might be seen using the stolen goods. They have no intention of keeping any of their booty anyway. It will be sold for cash or drugs, and at a fraction of what you paid for it. Read more