A very nice post. I had this concept explained to me in the Army, but you very rarely seem to hear it from alarm installers.

One nice example I did see from a professional installer concerned security grilles. The normal arrangement is to have a security grille protecting a weaker inner door, which is alarmed. (There is little point trying to alarm the grille, because the ability to reach inside the grille makes bypassing too easy.) Unfortunately, this arrangement means that a burglar can defeat the grille at his leisure, kick in the inner door, and now has his 5 minutes available to stuff his swag with whatever he can grab.

At a small business belonging to one of my friends, the installer pointed out that this is all barse-ackwareds. Instead, the outer door is very flimsy — just barely weatherproof — with a very cheap lock. The security grille is *inside*, behind the outer door, and both are covered by a PIR motion sensor and a time lapse camera. This way, the burglar easily defeats the outer door (no problems, it is cheap to repair), the alarm sounds 15 seconds after the door opens, and the burglar then discovers that he is still facing the main security barrier with the alarm already sounding! Defeating a security grille is easy; defeating it in under 5 minutes, with the alarm strobe pulsing, siren screaming in your ear, and trying not to show your face to the camera, is extremely hard — especially as he most likely didn’t even know it was there until he opened the outer door! On the couple of occasions this has occurred, the camera just show the burglar reacting with surprise, giving up, and leaving empty-handed. Even if he does defeat the grille, he now has only a few seconds left to grab stuff before the response arrives.

The particularly elegant thing about this clever arrangement is that it is also actually *cheaper* than the usual arrangement. This is because the solid door serves only to keep the wind out, and to act as a purely legal obstacle that indicates a definitely criminal act. It can be the cheapest door you can find, fitted with a $12 night latch. It is of no consequence if the lock can be “loided” in 3 seconds flat, all that matters is that opening it without a key definitely means a crime is occurring. The security is provided by detection of this perimeter breaking, plus the delay caused by the main barrier.

@Rick:
Yes, a safe is an excellent delay mechanism. UL actually rates them in terms of the minimum delay they will impose on a skilled professional burglar.

However, at 700 lbs you do still need to bolt it to the floor (not clear from your post if you did this, although I think “rip it from the floor” means you did). AFter all, you took 4 guys to move it, but what if they have 6 guys and a tirfor jack? Your 4 guys probably tried not to damage the house, what if the burglars just throw it down the stairs?

I found that insurance companies usually have a minimum weight at which they allow you to skip floorbolts, and that weight is more like 2,000 lb rather than 700.

You would definitely need advice from a structural engineer before putting a 2,000 lb safe in an upper storey. Plus, those things are darn expensive if you don’t really need it! In contrast, a single 3/8″ bolt has a tensile strength of over 4,000 lb, and you generally use at least two.

Thank you so much for the info on this website. My insurance company gives a discount for either a loud-sounding or monitored alarm system. I knew a monitored system was pointless for my home from past experience, but I didn’t know how to start securing my home. Thankfully I found your website. I have not had a chance to read through everything, so you may have answered this already…What if my precious possessions are people? I don’t have a lot of material possessions by choice, but I do have children. We’ve recently relocated to a house with the Master bedroom separated from the children’s by the living room and kitchen. How do I make sure they are safe?

I finally found the security door product I mentioned in the previous post. The residential site is Metalex Doors and the commercial site is Metalex Security.