blk@MITRE.ORG (Brian L. Kahn) (10/09/90)
I am interested in making my house resistant to breaking and entering, as opposed to detecting the same with an alarm system. * I am considering burglar bars on the basement casement windows. The main drawback seems to be fire exit. These bars swing open, and are secured with a lock (on the inside). I'm not too concerned about fire exit in this case because the windows would be very difficult to use due to small size and height from the floor, so an extra 30 seconds to unlock seems minor. I'm not sure how strong the wood casement that holds the bars is, however, so this might be more show than effect. * Traditional wood frame doors seem pretty wimpy. Our main doors are kind of drafty in the winter, too. I think I'll put in steel doors/frames with deadbolts. Might pay for themselves after a few winters. * What about the windows? I just saw a reference to mylar security film - anyone know what this is? I don't want bars on the real windows, and plastic plates (lucite?) with explosive bolts for fire exit sounds like too much trouble. The first floor windows on this house are about six feet up from the ground - how vulnerable is this in reality? -- B< Brian Kahn blk@security.mitre.org "may the farce be with you"
zeleznik@CS.UTAH.EDU (Mike Zeleznik) (10/22/90)
I lived in Manhattan (NYC) for back in the late 70's, and had some pretty
heavy duty bars on my apartment windows that had fire escape access (they
had an internal lock that was pretty easy to open form inside, but would be
a bit tuff from outside).
HOWEVER, the burglars simply pried them right out of the brick they were
anchored in. Perhaps they could have been anchored better, but as they
were, they offered little resistance. BUT, the noise of the crowbar and
such caused my neighbor to look outside, and on seeing them he yelled, and
they fled. So the bars DID work!
Mike
Michael Zeleznik Computer Science Dept.
University of Utah
zeleznik@cs.utah.edu Salt Lake City, UT 84112
(801) 581-5617wb8foz@MTHVAX.CS.MIAMI.EDU (David Lesher) (10/24/90)
One manufacturer makes bars with a latch. The latch is controlled by a pullbox that looks almost like a normal firebox, but is connected by heavy_duty choke cable. They are expensive AND the mfgr is 12 months behind on his orders..... -- A host is a host from coast to coast.....wb8foz@mthvax.cs.miami.edu & no one will talk to a host that's close............(305) 255-RTFM Unless the host (that isn't close)......................pob 570-335 is busy, hung or dead....................................33257-0335