<p>Our house was broken into the other day and we suspect, but do not know for sure, that someone related to our housecleaning company was responsible. We have terminated their employment with us.</p>
<p>I don’t want to live without cleaning help so I’m wondering how do we prevent such a thing from happening again.</p>
<p>We have an alarm system that, I’m sorry to say, we never used (until the break-in!) DH and I work (more than) full-time so we have to have cleaners in the house while we’re at work. Do we not set the alarm the day the cleaners are due? I’d be hesitant to give them the alarm code. Other things we should think about?</p>
<p>I know I sound like an idiot but I guess I’ve been living in a fool’s paradise of trust and I’m just plain rattled and I know CCers will have lots of great advice. </p>
<p>Some companies allow you to set specific codes you give to certain folks; so dog walker is one code, cleaning team is another and neither is the family code. Allows you to track who enters and when. I believe you can also specify when those codes will allow access.</p>
<p>As Mominva stated, you can give a special alarm code to your house cleaners and may be able to set it for use only at specific times. I’ve done that for visiting relatives. </p>
<p>A few other things to consider: You could install a camera monitoring system on your home’s exterior. Ours lets us view all cameras at once in real time and it records to a large hard drive for playback. It’s been very helpful multiple times. We learned (& had proof) when our Sentricon tech failed to check 3/4 of the bait stations, we can see when and where packages are delivered, and we had a good quality video clip to share with law enforcement when we experienced a vandalism incident.</p>
<p>You might consider a nanny-cam for occasional use in one or more rooms. We don’t have any indoors, but some friends do use them. Sometimes, just posting a sign for cameras can be a good deterrent.</p>
<p>You could install keypad locks. There are some for entry doors that can have special codes for different users and, I think, can be set to work only at certain times. Inside, you could swap some room or closet door handles for keypad lock handsets. We have several closets, including our master bedroom closets, with keypad locks that are used for everything from important papers to jewelry to liquor. When we’re at home, most of the doors are left partially open so we don’t have to bother with the codes each time we want something from the closet. I had a house cleaner drink nearly all of our liquor at a previous home, filling the bottles with water or tea afterwards, so now dh’s good bourbon is kept in a locked closet.</p>
<p>The camera systems are not that expensive. Dh bought ours from Costco and installed it himself. There are also peephole cameras that install in door in place of a standard peephole, if you just want some inexpensive for the entry doors. Do read all of the specs, because some only record if someone pushed the doorbell button on them instead of being motion activated and others don’t record but just act as large viewers. </p>
<p>We just went through this in July - house burglarized during the night. Yes, we, too, had an alarm system that we didn’t use. We did from that night forward, plus we upgraded and added a bunch of features. Of course the cameras are obvious, as are the keypad locks. With our alarm system we can access information from our cell phones, including the cameras and the keypad locks. So if someone shows up at the house to do some work, and we’re not there, they can call us and we can unlock the doors; that way they don’t have to have a code at all, if we don’t want them to. </p>
<p>H refers to our security now being like Fort Knox!</p>
<p>For others reading this thread, our security guy told us the biggest time for break-ins is actually during the day, although ours happened after 1AM.</p>
<p>@teriwtt…how did they get in? That is so scary, I’m assming you were home? I also have read the biggest deterent are dogs and home alarms systems that have the signs out front? Did you have a sign out front?</p>
<p>Also, how much do security systems cost now and do they ever go off accidently? That would scare the bejesus out of me in the middle of the night.</p>
<p>Actually, we got the cleaning service on the recommendation of the person who built our house. He uses them to clean after construction and the owner is horrified and is cooperating with the police. </p>
<p>Our break-in was during the day (the neighborhood is pretty empty), we did have a security system sign out front but because we think it was an “inside job” they probably knew we didn’t use it. (I’m glad it wasn’t at night . . . that would be so much more frightening!)</p>
<p>We are upgrading our security system - cameras and all. If I was more cynical, I’d think security companies ran around breaking into people’s houses because it drums up business! </p>
This is a good option, a decent system is around $1,000 and often go on sale. The systems come with more cameras than you really know what to do with. They have 2 systems, one that is analog-based like a traditional TV (they talk about TVL in their description) and ones that are digital based (description uses IP). I’d recommend the digital cameras.</p>
<p>One tip is to put the recording box somewhere that is not easily accessible such as in your attic. If you are burglarized you don’t want them to take the box that has all the video on it! </p>
<p>Back in 89 my place was broken into; I had the feeling of being violated, and having the house broken into is certainly that. I feel for the OP.</p>
<p>I also have an alarm, and have different codes for different people who need to come in when I’m away. Even my D has her own code. It costs me $40 a month, but I feel it’s worth it.</p>
<p>Ahem – one can buy from eBay “cameras” that are fake but absolutely look like the real thing. We have two mounted to “watch” the doggie door. You install batteries to make a red light blink on and off. Obviously it’s just for deterrent purposes. It cost us all of ten bucks. </p>
<p>conmama - as far as how they broke in, there are two possibilities that both involve the back door being unlocked. Either H forgot to lock it when he last let our dog out for the night, or he locked it, but it didn’t ‘catch’ when he shut it. We’ll never know, but the back door was not locked :: sigh::</p>
<p>We do have a dog, but he is crated in the basement at night. We also had a sign in the front yard, but this person came in through the back door, so we doubt he saw it. Our front porch lights were on, and stay on all night long. We also have motion-detector floodlights on the side of the house, as well as at the back door - obviously neither deterred him. Since the event, we got more signs, and have them at the back door, as well as stickers on several downstairs windows. This was obviously someone who was going along checking back doors, looking for an unlocked one, and found one at ours. We also live at the end of a cup-de-sac, so we have basically no traffic where he could have been seen - a nice feature for us regarding traffic, but prime target for burglars.</p>
<p>Yes, we were home - we were in bed upstairs, and I was still awake. When the back door came open (it’s not a slider), I heard the vertical blinds as they hit each other, and that’s when I knew someone was downstairs, woke up H, and called 911. The vertical blinds sort of came off track a little; in fact, I’m waiting right now for someone to get here to finally replace them. </p>
<p>Other things besides cameras, keypad locks and motion detectors that you can get, are glass break detectors. We now have two downstairs - they are designed to pick up the sound of glass breaking, and if it detects this, it will automatically call our police station - no waiting around to see if someone disarms the alarm system with the correct code. And we have alarm detectors on all of our downstairs windows, so if someone opens one when the system is armed (if we ever forget to lock them), it will go off. </p>
<p>Holy smokes, I didn’t realize you were in the house, and awake when the house was entered! I would have pooped my pants from here to there and back again. </p>
<p>@teriwitt: That’s horrible! So glad your burglar left without hurting anyone.</p>
<p>@conmama: Our current system has had only one false alarm. The glass break detector went off when I dropped something (hard) on the kitchen counter. Some previous systems had trouble with the glass break detectors but the alarm installer was able to adjust the sensitivity. We’ve never had the motion sensors or perimeter sensors give false alarms. Our only other trouble has come from dh failing to close a door completely (several times) and a change in air pressure caused that door to pop open and trip the alarm. He did that one morning while I was running errands, couldn’t hear the alarm or his cell phone because he wasn’t wearing his hearing aids, so I got a call from the monitoring service. I persuaded them to not call the police yet, but to call me back in about 15 minutes to give me time to get home. Then if I didn’t answer or didn’t give the code word, they should call the police.</p>
<p>It was an almost surreal moment. In an almost instant I went from denial that I’d heard any noise, to realizing someone was in the house. He was in the house for probably 30-45 seconds; as soon as I realized what was going on, I woke up H, who, from the top of the stairs, saw the guy heading toward the stairs and yelled really loud at him… the guy took off out the back door and H kind of chased him as he went from backyard to side of house to driveway. H stopped in the driveway - he only wanted to see which direction he ran so we could tell the police. He managed to get H’s wallet, iPod Touch and watch. Sitting within two feet of those items were my purse, H’s laptop and cell phone, so we know he was going for the small stuff that would be easy to carry. The police told us when they get in a house, they almost always go straight for the master bedroom because they know that’s where the good stuff is, that is small. Makes me think I should start keeping my jewelry in one of the other bedrooms that now serve as guest rooms!</p>
<p>Agree with Teri–we had so many deals fall through when we were looking at houses, literally for years! Just before we found the one we bought, we had put an offer on a house we liked and the seller accepted but we still hadn’t marketed or sold two properties which were negative cash flow for us so we really couldn’t afford the house. Reluctantly, we got the lender to deny our loan application and got our deposit back. (We had also lost out on several other offers and counted our blessings as we found MAJOR issues with them and were glad that the offers weren’t accepted.)</p>
<p>The house we did purchase has been GREAT! We love the neighbors and still see the house we almost bought and are glad that we ended up with the one we have instead.</p>
<p>Good luck–I’m sure the right house will work out for you, especially subject to and after a GOOD Inspection.</p>
<p>@veryhappy, we also have a few fake (as well as real) cameras installed. Please pull the batteries out as the real cameras(look at the banks’ and stores’) don’t have blinking red lights. Those in the know realize they are fake. </p>