Back yard

[hobo]

I live in a terrace house with a back yard. There's a narrow lane at the other side of the wall.
The yard is used to store wood and has one high-up sensor light.
The wall is about 8ft high and has a decent - but not terribly strong - door accessing the lane.
The lane is not very well lit and tends to be used as a dumping ground.
Most of the other houses have makeshift wooden or wire extensions on top of their walls.
Sounds grim but it's actually an OK street with a mix of students, young families and old timers.

I would like to beef up my 'defences' - as it were (!)

What are your thoughts on what I can legally do to strengthen/deter?

While I leave this question hanging, I'll do some research myself.

Thanks, Hobo.

[Yorkshire Andy]

Trelace with hawthorn or gorse branches woven into it


or the plastic spike strips and anti vandal paint


climbing roses.. or bambles will help too

[Tizzie]

Have you thought of changing your back gate to a metal one plus what everyone has suggested. I also live in a terrace. I have a wooden back fence and wooden back gate and will be getting a costing in the New Year to replace them with metal, I would definitely include the prickly shrubs.

Tizzie

[hobo]

Ooh, I like those wall spikes! Should deter the neighbourhood moggies too!
Unfortunately, the back yard doesn't get a lot of light, so I'm not sure that prickly shrubs would thrive. I'll pot up blackberry and hawthorn cuttings and see how they do next year.
I'd never thought of a metal door. I'll look at costings.
Thanks both!

In this thread I'm thinking that, as the economy further tanks and police resources stretched, I anticipate an uptick in crime - and that I should take appropriate steps to improve house security.

Moving inside the house, we have double glazing throughout - except for the front door which is solid wood with mortice and yale locks. I'll come back to that later!

The wooden kitchen/dining room door at the back of the house has bolts on it - we always lock these at night. I'm considering adding bolts to the dining room/hallway door. It's not a fire escape route and would slow down any intruders.
What do you think?

Although my main concern is the back of the house, I should consider the front too. The street lights are a little way away, so I'm thinking of an nice sensor light would do the trick. It wouldn't look out of place as a few houses on our street already have them. I'm thinking that throwing light in the small front yard would be an added deterrent.

[Tizzie]

If I had an excess of money for internal security measures for downstairs I would have ,sorry, don't know the exact name but the description is you know what an expandable garden trellis looks like but in metal, you see them inside some shop windows.

Tizzie

[ojiu0u4]

I am considering a slurry of broken glass, 6.5 mm ball bearings and oily/washing up liquid/water fluids that can be distributed if needed to hinder approaches.

[jansman]

We have had intruders in the past. They have always accessed the back by coming in over the gardens it seems. My garden is a 100 yards long so there is scope for n'er -do -wells to make mischief without us knowing!
After the last incident tge main thing I did was to put up an 8' gate topped with barbed wire halfway down the yard. My workshop is large and takes up the rest of the width at that point. I also put in motion activated lights, an alarm and cctv. As for the last two, even dummies can be effective(and cheaper), and of course you have to put up a sign to state that there is cctv in operation. Regarding your wall Hobo, get some spikes on top. I have a wall at the top of my garden which now has Pyrocanthus growing up it. Wicked thing. However, while that was was establishing itself I put spikes on mine. Well, actually I put cement and broken glass on which I HAVE to stress is ILLEGAL. Of course I have removed that now, ahem!
Another thing you could do is to put a 'Beware of the dog' sign up. This simple thing can be enough to stop an opportunist intruder picking on your property. Regarding your gate, wood or metal, a simple bar across it to brace it against being forced can work. My workshop door opens inwards,and I have drilled two screw eyes through it(the sort for bracing fence wire) which slot through a metal bar and then padlock across the width of the door and frame to stop it being forced. Of course non of the measures are fail- safe. They just buy time.

[Plymtom]

Like Hobo we only have a small yard wooden gate/door high wall, the yard slopes down and there is a step down to the door, this small area behind the door is where I put our wheelie bins so the door even if forced would be both blocked and make too much noise to come through unnoticed, I've considered spikes on the wall, I've also considered greasing it, there's also planting thing which need support along in front of a fence/wall so you have small canes sticking up (ouch), as has been said there's no stopping, but any way of making it hard and noisy deters quite well, our alarm is geared to detect attempted entry, not wait until the are in, the internal sounders, and light coming on all over and outside the house has been enough thus far to send them running as soon as a crowbar has been knocked in a frame, so look to deter, make noise, things which whilst legal like the support canes cause pain, I saw barbed wire, glass in cement and spikes mentioned, along with lanes full of junk, you can bet there would be an old quilt kicking around or something similar which renders most of that useless, as would tools for cutting wire ( adding things to the wire which make noise if it's disturbed helps here), think not only of the defence but how you would get around it if you had to, there was a TV info/ad ages ago demonstrating how you would get in if you accidentally locked yourself out

[xfilion]

Hi Hobo.
Here's my thoughts.
I see the protection of my property like a traffic light.
Green - Garden or any space around the vicinity of my home.
Amber - First floor. What to do if that is breached and intruders are downstairs.
Red - If intruders attempt to come up stairs.

So if you concentrate on the Green issue then you need to think like an intruder. Walk around your property and work out how, as a prepper, you would breach a property if you wanted to check it for spare food. All the suggestions made are excellent. Light tends to be a good deterrent as would a burglar alarm. If this is prominently displayed that could be all that's needed to deter a wouldbe lout as they may be choosing an easy property to break into. Also make sure your bins are chained together and away from any walls that could provide access to your home or be used to climb over fences. Ladders go without saying and should be chained up or in a place they can't be used.

If your home is breeched then it goes to another level. Make a plan of what you could do if you hear someone downstairs. Think about chucking down several attack alarms - noise confuses. I recently had to use a flea bomb and boy are they noxious and deploy very quickly. Bung one of them downstairs and you take away the intruders ability to breathe. Buy a torch that is featured on the UK prepper website that can strobe. Take away vision.

If they persist and get into your red zone then that's another discussion.

[tigs]

simple but effective is to put up a pir activated light