This quick guide will help you adapt your home security & maintenance to the change in seasons & prep for the holidays
The leaves are falling, the days are shorter, and the colder weather provides the perfect excuse for more cozy days in.
But autumn’s colorful display is also a reminder that it’s time to secure and prepare your home for the holiday season.
These six simple yet practical tips will help you keep your home safe from intruders, maintenance issues, and fires so you can enjoy the beauty of fall with peace of mind.
Check & Reinforce Your Entry Points
You want your doors and windows to be secure year-round, but especially when it gets colder and the days grow shorter.
You don’t want to let the cold creep in more than necessary, and burglars often do their business under the cover of night, so take the time to inspect your entry points:
- Check your locks and door handles: Tighten any loose handles, replace old or faulty locks, and make sure every window has a secure lock, even the upstairs ones.
- Check your caulking and weather stripping: Inspect the weatherproofing around your doors and windows and make any necessary repairs to keep the elements at bay and save yourself some money on your electric bill.
- Consider adding security film to your windows: This impact-resistant material offers a much-needed layer of protection for the most vulnerable entry points in your home. While it may not stop an intruder, it will certainly make it more difficult to break through your windows. It can also protect against stray objects and breakages due to weather and natural disasters.
Check & Clean Your Gutters
If you or your neighbor’s property is rich in greenery, you may need to clear your gutters of leaves and debris more often than normal. This is especially true in the fall when the trees shed like crazy.
If left unchecked, overstuffed gutters can lead to roof damage and leaks that can creep into your attic, walls, and even into your foundation. So be sure to check them every few months if they’re prone to filling up quickly.
Decorate Safely
When decorating the house for the fall, take care to avoid creating any fire hazards or blocking entry points.
Holiday decorations are often flammable, and if they’re placed near heat sources like candles, radiators, or fireplaces, they could ignite and cause a life-threatening blaze.
Speaking of fires, cooking fires are the most common emergency on Thanksgiving. If you have to evacuate the house, the last thing you want is to have to push through bulky, obstructive decorations to escape. So keep all doors and windows clear when setting up for the holidays.
It’s also important to ensure your outdoor decorations are secured to the ground. A heavy gust of wind can easily sweep away any items that aren’t set up properly, so use stakes, heavy bases, or other anchoring objects to keep them in place.
Maintain Your Smoke Alarms & Carbon Monoxide Detectors
As we just covered, fires are all too common in the fall. So take a tour around the house and test your smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors.
Make sure they all work properly, swap out any low batteries, and replace any devices that are over ten years old.
Inspect & Maintain Your Roof
Between rain, snow, heavy wind, and falling leaves, your roof takes a beating in the fall. That’s why it’s the perfect opportunity to look for and clear up any issues before winter arrives:
- Piled-up debris – Lingering debris can cause your gutters to clog up faster and make it more difficult to spot roof damage. Pick a day to tackle the task yourself, or hire a roof cleaning company to do the heavy lifting for you.
- Loose or damaged shingles – Now that your roof is clean, you can take a close look at the shingles to spot any that need repairing or replacing. If you find any damage, don’t wait to fix it. Leaving it as is will only harm the integrity of your roof, potentially lead to leaks, and leave you with far more costly repairs down the road.
- Damaged roof flashing – While you’re up there, check your flashing for any cracks, tears, or punctures. Flashing is the material that seals vents, chimneys, and other structures to your roof. If it’s damaged, it could let moisture in, which can seriously weaken your roof.
Invest in Your Personal Safety
The previous tips are preventive measures to reduce your risk of unnecessary damage and home emergencies. But this last tip is the icing on the home security cake that brings it all together.
When an emergency occurs, you want an avenue that allows you to get help as fast as possible. A lifeline you can count on that provides unmatched response times, minimal risk of delays, and as few unnecessary steps as possible.
If your first thought after reading that was 911, you might be surprised to find that that’s not the case. The 911 system commonly experiences issues that impact victims’ ability to get help, including:
- Callers being transferred and re-routed to different departments depending on their emergency, forcing them to answer the same questions multiple times in a crisis.
- Understaffed monitoring centers, which lead to victims being placed on hold due to unmanageable call volumes.
- Hundreds of thousands of non-emergency and prank calls that clog up the phone lines and prevent real victims from getting help.
- Nationwide network outages that effectively shut down the 911 service for unpredictable amounts of time.
It’s scary to think about, but these issues can easily make all the difference in a life-threatening situation.
That’s why thousands of people across the US trust the Rescu personal safety app. Rescu solves each of the above issues with a streamlined, no-nonsense system that lets you send for help in seconds.
Just two taps on your smartphone or Apple Watch lets you dispatch fire, police, or ambulance services to your address or current location anywhere in the US. The app instantly sends your pre-registered personal and medical information to responders as soon as you send an alert, and there’s always the option to text or call your dispatcher afterward if your situation allows.
But there’s no phone call required, no questions to answer, and no delays.
This is because Rescu is a subscriber-dedicated service that doesn’t rely on the 911 system to dispatch emergency personnel. Rescu HQ is its own private, UL-certified, 5-diamond-rated monitoring center, and it’s set up to get you the help you need as quickly as possible.
It’s no coincidence that Rescu is the fastest way to get help in an emergency. Click or tap below to download Rescu today and carry home security in your pocket this fall.
