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I agree with these guys about the danger from fire. Fires cause more injury and more loss of life and property yearly than bad guys do.

I was in the alarm industry for a couple of years right after leaving the PD. We sold full perimeter systems with internal backup sensors and "two-way voice. (once the alarm activated, the monitoring center could listen to your house and announce the dispatch of the police over the system. In event of a hold up or hostage alarm, they would listen silently and report to the police what they could hear)

We also sold monitored fire detection. I would not sell a system without it, even if I had to work the cost into the system free to the homeowner. (my average system was $3900, so a couple of hundred to add fire protection was a bargain)

A double cylinder dead bolt CAN slow you down in the event of a fire, especially of you have not drilled. I have a protective 100 pound Shepherd in the backyard and an alarm on instant when we sleep. The key stays in the cylinder at night. It comes out when we leave the house or travel. Have you drilled? This thread reminded me that we have not in a couple of years. We did several times after we moved in, but not recently. (I know what we will be doing tonight)

Burglars seldom will break a window and crawl through broken glass. The standard MO is to break or crack the window and reach in to unlock. They sometimes use an Ice Pick to pop the lever type locks open. Of course, I have seen plenty of doors kicked open.

Here is something to think about, does your car have a built in garage door opener button? Do you leave your car out of the garage? Do you lock the door from your house to your garage?

Great thread. Please keep the ideas coming.

Oh, regarding the lack of all upstairs windows being done..... I get why the builders do it. I don't agree, but I get it. I had the rest done on my own for a couple of reasons. You never know........and I have a soon to be teen-aged daughter. I trust her implicitly, but she has her own code to the alarm. I can order an open/close report from my monitoring center. Its just one more thing I can do to monitor the use of the system, and know that she doesn't leave the house after lights out. (I know how bad that sounds, but I believe with all of the temptations kids have today, this is just one less to worry about.)

I won't say about my home.

However, my wife and I looked at MANY new homes in late '01-'02 by many different builders, and none of them had dead bolts on the door from the garage to the house.

No house I ever lived in the past had one, nor do I recall ever seeing one on someone else's home.


When we bought this house (new) in '03, the backdoor had a single cylinder deadbolt. (key on the outside, lever on the inside). The upper panel of the door was glass. I replaced that before we moved in with a double keyed deadbolt.

The alarm systems has all of the downstairs windows wired, but for some reason only a couple of the upstairs windows. That too, was remedied, and I added a couple of extra devices as backups.