The following questions are guidelines to use to insure a safe home environment.  Go through this checklist and ask yourself whether your home is in compliance with these measures. Any answer indicates an area where corrective action may be required.  Please feel free to discuss what action you should take (or if you don’t know the answer) with your knowledgeable locksmith technician.

• Do all of your exterior doors have good quality deadbolt locks with no less than a 1 throw?
• Are all of your deadbolt strike plates on your exterior doors secured with at least 3 screws?
• Do your exterior doors have glass within 3 feet of the lock have double cylinder deadbolt locks installed on them?
• Do all of your exterior doors without glass have a wide-angle door-viewer installed for identifying visitors?
• Are all exterior doors constructed of metal or solid core wood?
• Is your front entrance lit well enough to enable you to identify visitors at night?
• Did you have the locks rekeyed when you first moved into your home?
• Do you always lock all your doors when you are home for the night or when you leave your residence?
• If you have an overhead garage door without an automatic opener, does it have good quality padlocks installed on both sides of the door?
• Do you always close your overhead garage door, even when you are at home?
• Does your door leading from your garage have a good quality deadbolt installed?
• Do you use these deadbolts on a regular basis?
• Do all of your sliding glass doors have at least one of the following? Track lock, insertion pin lock, hinged door bar, metal or wooden dowl in track.
• Do your auxiliary locks prevent the door from being lifted out of its track?
• Do you keep all gates on fences locked with a quality outdoor lock?
• Have you trimmed all bushes and shrubs to provide visibility to all windows and to prevent people from hiding near doors and windows?
• Have you cut back all branches from trees that might provide easy access to second floor windows?
• Do you keep all outside home equipment (lawnmowers, bicycles, ladders, etc.) secured in a fenced-in area or locked storage shed or chained to a fixed, immovable object?
• Is your address clearly visible from the street in the event emergency people need to find you quickly?
• Do you keep all guns safely stored in a lock box, safe, or vault?
• Do you leave cash and valuables in a secure place?
• If you must hide a key outside the house, is it in a secured lock box?