Guest Post: Garage Door Lockdown!

You’ve got everything you need to keep your home safe…but is the garage door secure? The garage door commonly gets exploited by intruders simply because while many homeowners will take the time to lock their doors and windows – they don’t think as far ahead when it comes to the garage door. To make matters worse, if someone can get into your garage, they can then close the door behind them and take their time working on the connecting door into your house without worrying about being spotted. Fortunately, a little common sense and planning ahead can ensure all your bases are covered.

Securing The Garage Door

Is your garage door in good shape? Most garage doors produced these days are built to last for 10 years or more, but the attached parts like rollers and springs will be likely to wear out much sooner and need to be replaced. You’ll also want to make sure that any bolts or other fasteners are securely tightened – anything loose or rusty could potentially be a weak spot that makes it easier to tamper with the garage door from outside.

Don’t count on one option to keep your garage door physically locked if you’re planning on leaving for vacation. While your garage door might have a built-in lock, this won’t keep anyone out who really wants to get into your garage. Locking the garage door from inside makes it that much harder to defeat – just put a C-clamp on each track above the garage door so it can’t be lifted at all even if the door is unlocked.

If you’ve got a garage door with built-in windows – make sure these are covered up or otherwise obscured if you park in the garage and/or keep anything valuable in the garage. If you have any hammers, drills, ladders or other tools in the garage, make sure these are locked up or out of sight. If someone gets into the garage, you don’t want to make it easier for them to break into the house.

If the worse happens and someone does get into the garage, don’t make it any easier for them to get into the house. The connecting door into the house usually isn’t that secure – replace it with a solid door and a good deadbolt that can’t be easily picked. To prevent it from being kicked in, you can install a door jamb reinforcement kit.

Securing The Garage Door Opener

A lot of garage door break-ins occur using the garage door opener‘s emergency release handle or cord to open the garage door from outside. This is usually located just inside the garage door, making it easy to activate it using only a coat hanger poked through a crack. Fortunately, you can prevent this by zip-tying the handle in place or removing the cord and putting it in a safe place – the emergency release can still be used normally, however.

If you keep your garage door opener remote in the car, get one you can keep on your keychain instead or take the remote with you when you leave the car, even if you’re parked in the driveway. If the car is stolen and you left the remote in it, you’ve effectively given a thief easy access to the garage.

Do you have a newer garage door opener that transmits a new random code every time you use it? While you’re less likely to see this happen nowadays, it was possible at one point for a clever thief to tap into your garage door opener’s frequency and detect the code it receives from the remote.

If you’re going out of town for a while, some garage door openers have a “vacation mode” you can turn on that locks it down until you come home. Alternately, you can just unplug the garage door opener completely until you come home.