Posts Tagged ‘elderly care’
An Automated Home Security System
These days people are becoming more concerned about their home security, mainly because of the mounting crime rate. Even homes that have an older security system should be checked to see whether their security system is out of date or passable.
It is not so much that an older system may stop working, but technology advances very quickly and your sensors may not be the best variety or even the variety that suit your home the best.
The kind of security system that you should be using can change as the constituent members of your family changes. For example, if you have just had a baby, you could hook up a surveillance camera to the bedroom or put a motion sensor pointing along side a toddler’s bed so that you know if he or she gets up out of bed.
There are many types of security systems, including wired, wireless, monitored and Internet. The Internet wireless system is or at least can be fully automated.
That means that you can control it through the hand set or any online device like a laptop or desktop computer. This means that you can check up on your home from your office or when you are away on holiday.
If surveillance cameras are part of your home security system, then you will be able to see and check up on your home on your computer monitor from anywhere in the world. If you connect sensors to some table lamps around your house, you will even be able to switch lights on and off to make it look as if you are at home when you are in fact hundreds of miles away. Put the TV on such a sensor and you can even switch that on and off as well.
If you put a surveillance camera in your children’s bedrooms and the living room, you could check up on the baby sitter or your business cash register on your WAP enabled mobile phone or PDA. This kind of automated can be fitted by a competent DIYer, but is intended to be fitted by professionals.
This kind of automated system is very comforting. Imagine being able to check up on your home, children or business by watching live video footage on any computer or Internet phone anywhere in the world!
An automated security system is not cheap, but is worth the peace of mind that it brings. You could get near total automated home or business security by the end of next week. Pay for it over time, if you have too, but they are not as expensive as you may think
Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with home security systems comparison. If you are interested in Security Systems For Home Use, please click through to our site.
The Importance Of Home Security
People have always tried to protect themselves and their families, just like most animals do. In very early days, cavemen protected their caves by setting fires outside the entrance to deter interlopers and wild animals. Later on, man learned how to increase his security by training dogs to safeguard him and his family. Later still, houses and then doors were invented; bars and locks arrived soon after that.
However, until a few decades ago in the west, people lived in extended large families. A family could consist of six-to-ten children and the mother and the grandmother would often live there too. This made home security systems extraneous from the early 18th Century to the 1930’s, which were quite peaceful times. After the Second World War, families were not so large and new families got their own house away from their parents.
Nowadays, both parents are likely to be working and the children are almost certainly at school. This means that many houses are left unoccupied during the day, making them easy plunder for burglars. In fact, the number of household burglaries has risen by almost 10% in the last five years according to American government figures. Furthermore, according to a survey, forty percent of home burglaries were carried out due to inappropriate locks and doors.
ANSI (American National Standard Institute) created a standard for deadbolt locks for external doors which is very difficult to beat. If you are concerned about your exterior doors, you should seek these ANSI deadbolts out, but beware, there are many copies. However, regardless of the type of lock, the quality of the door is just as important. Its thickness and composition can also be a disincentive. After all, why put an elaborate deadbolt on a door made of cardboard?
There are about 14,000,000 home burglaries each year in the United States and many of them are preventable. The first stage that you should attain in home security is well-built doors and sturdy locks. Deadbolts on exit doors is a good idea.
Once you have completed that, get some exterior security lighting that reacts to either motion or body heat. The former sort are microwave and the latter passive infra red sensors. These sensors will also contain a daylight sensor so that they will only become active at night. The sensors will also save you money by activating the powerful halogen floodlights only when someone enters the range of the sensor’s beam.
Once you have done that, you should think about a home security alarm system. This should include contact sensors on all exterior doors and windows, vibration sensors on all widows to alarm you in case of breakage and PIR or microwave motion sensors in the corridors and hallways.
Then, if you want to go even further in your home security system, you can fit surveillance cameras on each exterior wall of the house and maybe one in the interior too. You do not have to take all these precautionary measures at once, if you are short of cash, but they should be taken in that sequence.
Owen Jones, the writer of this writer, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with home security systems comparison. If you are interested in Security Systems For Home Use, please click through to our site.
Panic Alarms For Home And Business.
In all probability, every home and every business would benefit from the protection of a panic alarm. Breaks-in are common enough, but with people living longer the probability of stroke or heart attack have risen too. If you were living alone it would be dreadful to be lying on the ground helpless for hours. Panic alarms are the answer. They can be sited in a handy location or worn around your neck.
These are not the sort of personal alarms that emit a high pitched whistle or siren sound. Those alarms are meant to deter criminals on the street or to attract attention to the user. No, I mean a device that triggers your home security system. it does not create a noise of its own, but signals with the main security control box by some sort of radio signal.
Some of these panic alarms do not trigger the main security siren, but instead send a message to a monitoring security company. These so-called silent panic alarms are most often used in banks, firearms shops and places that deal with lots of ready money. However, any business could use a silent panic alarm. Household alarm systems usually activate the external siren in order to alert your neighbours that you are having problems.
Panic buttons are especially helpful to the elderly or and infirm. Sometimes, people fall and cannot get up. You could also have a heart attack or stroke and not be able to make it to the phone. A panic button on a card around your neck would solve this problem. Some of these panic buttons are monitored too and others even have a microphone and speaker so that you can speak to an operator and explain your situation.
Some of these panic buttons have a keypad so that you can send codes to the operator. Other means have been built into watches and brooches in order to make them easier to carry. If you wear your panic alarm, it is much less easy to forget to take it with you when you go upstairs or into the garden.
If you can afford security, you really ought to have a system, as good as you can afford, installed into your home and business. A panic alarm is a useful extra item for home and office use too, but it is especially reassuring to the elderly. Many older people are frightened of falling when they are in the house alone and fear of burglars or worse is a constant worry. A panic alarm linked to the main home siren is also a reassurance to women living alone.
If you do get a home security alarm with a panic button, make sure that you keep a standby battery near at hand and check that the battery in the device has not become exhausted. You should also advise the neighbours you get on best with that you have a home security system and that they should come to your aid or phone the police, if they hear your home security siren and see the flashing light.
Owen Jones, the writer of this writer, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with home security systems comparison. If you are interested in Security Systems For Home Use, please click through to our site.
Do You Have Security Breeches In Your Home Or Business?
Security is an essential facet of life, but then it always has been. It is normal for parents to try their best to protect their families and it is normal and even a legal requirement for an employer to ensure the safety of his or her staff. Part of the way we carry out these duties is to secure the environment in which we live and work – our homes and our offices or other places of work.
A proper security system for our homes and businesses is usually an electronic system. Windows and doors – ie likely entry points – will be monitored by sensors. In order to maintain an effective security system, it is necessary to use a frequently changed password system. In a home the keypad will usually be numeric only, but you should change the password at least every month and maybe even every week.
For example, if you have teenage children or older, they will be bringing friends back. These friends will be able to see you child entering the password. This can be even more serious if the person is a boyfriend or girlfriend who subsequently gets dumped.
Similarly in an office or other place of work, it is a good idea to have pass cards that can be canceled if the employee leaves the company. A lot of damage is caused every year to material goods by disgruntled ex-employees and old boy- and girlfriends.
You can assist passers-by and police by leaving some light on inside your building. Frequent passers-by, neighbours and police will get accustomed to seeing lights on, so if a burglar switches them off, they will become suspicious.
Prowlers do not like light. Similarly, do not let bushes, shrubs or trees hide possible entry points. Keep them cut back so that people can see any suspicious activity. You would be surprised how many people just sit in their windows all day watching.
Outdoor security lighting is an excellent way of deterring intruders at night. Install a few solar garden lights that are activated by passive infra red motion sensors and they will be inexpensive to run. The good thing about them is that they do not announce their presence to the would be intruder, but they will catch him or her in a floodlight when he enters your property.
Another suggestion is to nail carpet gripper just under the top edge on the inside of your garden fence. Anyone trying to haul himself up over your fence will have a very horrible shock and leave DNA for the police.
If your business or home has an open door policy in order to allow clients or your kids to walk in, install doorbells or chimes that are activated by under carpet sensors, door sensors or PIR’s, so that employees or family can not be taken by surprise. It is very useful, because if your busy secretary doubles as a meeter of walk-in clients, it will ensure that she does not miss anybody or keeps anybody waiting.
Owen Jones, the writer of this writer, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with home security systems comparison. If you are interested in Security Systems For Home Use, please click through to our site.
Human Monitored Home And Business Alarms
Many Americans are just starting to appreciate that advanced security measures are not only for the extremely rich. You just cannot get too much security for yourself and your family or your employees. The problems in society are getting worse too, not better. The current recession is hitting hard and splitting society even more into the have and have-nots, the working and the not-working.
However, these days criminals do not target the very wealthy, because they have all the protection that money can buy. The citizens most likely to be robbed and burgled are the working middle classes. They get robbed when they are at work and the kids are at school or when they are sleeping in their beds.
This is why it is necessary to have the best automated security you can afford taking care of your home and family twenty-four hours a day. But it is not only your home, your business and workers deserve security as well. How many gun-toting lunatics have shot their co-workers dead in the last few years?
Not many firms can afford security personnel but you could get the next best thing, which is electronically monitored surveillance. There are various types of system available and most are flexible enough to be adaptable to any building. You could then monitor the system yourself during working hours by having a screen in the office or your home and send the signal to a security firm at other times of the day, at weekends and at night.
If you adopt this kind of system, you will be placing your home or office in the top echelon of secured properties and professional burglars will realize it and stay away from you and yours. Most people resent the monitoring fees, but the system falls down, if no-one is watching the image relayed by the cameras. You could try to reduce this cost by monitoring the images yourself for part of the day and relaying the image to professionals when you are unavailable. You could also ask your insurance company for a discount and ask your accountant to put the expense down against your taxes.
The good thing about a monitored system is that you know that help is at hand twenty-four hours every day. You may be living alone or prone to fits or a heart attack. You could get almost instant help in these instances by pressing the panic alarm. These panic buttons can be positioned at the front and back door, in every room in the house or you could have a radio button on a necklace around your neck. These systems are quite common and are used by many care centres for the elderly or the infirm.
You will almost certainly have to do some sums to work out whether you need or can afford a monitored home security system, but there is no doubt that it is the most secure system available. However, not all home security monitoring businesses are the same, so it is worth checking up with friends or with the companies’ governing body or even the local council to see if they have a good reputation.
Owen Jones, the writer of this writer, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with home security systems comparison. If you are interested in Security Systems For Home Use, please click through to our site.