Wait 10 minutes and there’ll be another burglary.

Here in ‘safe’ New Zealand, we have around 54,000 burglaries per year, equating to 1 burglary every 10 minutes. And increasingly, rural and lifestyle properties are being targeted.

Topping the list of stolen items from rural properties are chainsaws, hand tools, small machinery, fuel, and farm bikes and bike parts.

Is your property an easy target?

In many rural settings, neither you or your neighbours would hear any unusual disturbances. And with valuable equipment in your sheds and a family to protect you want to make sure your property is secure. So what can you do?

Here are 5 precautions you can take:

1. Secure your boundary and add a driveway beam

If you don’t have a perimeter fence it’s a good idea to put one up. It’s a visual and/or physical barrier to reinforce your property line. Add security signage along the fenceline as an extra deterrent.

Driveway beams (alarms) are a great idea too. They alert you the instant a person or vehicle enters your property. They work on the principle of transmitting an invisible beam of light between two points. Like an invisible security gate. When the beam is interrupted, an alert is generated.

Up at your house (or somewhere else on your property), you receive an alert from a buzzer, text message, pocket beeper or a CCTV image (or combination). The system allows you to remotely monitor anything from driveways, sheds, or machinery and can be as simple or complex as needed – depending on your risks, budget and environment.

2. Light up your buildings

Motion-activated spotlights are an excellent deterrent. A bright light suddenly turning on does wonders to frighten would-be thieves away.

Place the lights in strategic areas such as around doors, walkways or equipment, and around sheds and your home, both front and back. Make sure you mount them high enough to prevent criminals from being able to remove the bulb or cover the sensor.

3. Lock up

Lock everything up when not in use. Your house, sheds, and out buildings. Cars, bikes, tractors. Gates. Keep them all locked.

4. Get an alarm system installed

Alarm systems can be the difference between a burglar only having seconds in your property before they are detected, or having minutes or hours to ransack your property.

Make sure you install alarms around your home and in buildings that contain high-value farm property and assets. Alarms with surveillance capability (CCTV) are one of the most useful tools for rural security.

Systems such as the Risco Agility 3 wireless security system feature advanced motion detectors with integrated cameras. What this means, is the cameras can detect, record and take a sequence of photos of any unusual movements the instant they occur. The photos are sent (and stored) via the cloud to your smartphone. The instant someone breaks in.

5. Keep in touch with your neighbours

It seems obvious, but make sure you share contact details with your neighbours. Discuss any suspicious activity with them. Keep an eye on things for each other. Let them know if you’re going away or have people staying. Work together to protect your properties.

For more information, complete this Rural Security Scorecard published by the New Zealand Police to see how secure your farm or lifestyle property really is.

Protect yourself and your family today.

At Be Alarmed we specify and install driveway beams and CCTV alarm systems for rural applications. Interested to find out more? Give me (Gavin) a call on 027 578 1298. Or you can request a quote now.