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During the spring and summertime, many Brits spend much of their time outdoors or in the back garden. But when the colder months start knocking in, most of them tend to overlook their gardens, including their outbuildings over the course of winter.
The thing is, most savvy burglars take advantage of the winter season to steal shed contents as daylight hours are short during this period. When daytime is shorter, there’s likely to be anyone outdoors, considering the freezing temperatures outside.
If you own a garden shed—whatever the purpose is, take into account that it holds monetary and sentimental value. Whether it’s a set of gardening equipment (e.g., lawnmowers, hedge trimmers, etc.) or outdoor party stuff like barbecues, tents, tables and chairs, it’s crucial to ensure that everything’s safe and secured.
Secure Your Shed: Eight Simple Ways to Do It
During the gloomy, cold mornings and long, dark nights, it’s vital to check your outdoor buildings regularly. To help you secure your shed, our team have shared the best and most cost-effective tips and tricks to do it.
Are you ready to deter any potential thieves and criminals that might lurk in your shed during the darkest months? Instead of merely relying on a rusty old lock, you should utilise several different methods to avoid theft, such as:
- Anchoring your shed,
- Fitting an alarm,
- Carefully choosing where you place your shed.
1. Choose the Location Carefully
One of the tips to secure your shed is choosing the ideal location carefully. To ensure that you can deter thieves from trying to break in in your shed, it should be correctly positioned.
This means your shed must not be seen from the street but not entirely out of your sight.
2. Replace the Lock
When it comes to security, padlocks plays a major role. If you don’t want to get bypassed easily, avoid using low-quality locks. Instead, opt for a hasp and a strong padlock is an excellent option as it will secure your shed well.
Another thing to consider is to avoid attaching multiple padlocks at once. This could attract the thieves that you’ve got something in there to hide.
3. Replace the Door Hinge
The main door of your shed will be one of your garden building’s weakest points. Most of the doors are usually attached with a short screw, which could be easily screwed or forced off.
What you can do is to replace the screws with nuts and bolts and superglue the nut to the bolt on the inside of the door to toughen them up. By doing so, it will deter criminals from trying to prise off your shed’s door.
4. Anchor the Shed
A brawny thief could easily lift one side of a small shed up to gain access to any treasures it may contain. To prevent this, anchor your shed to the ground with L brackets, or attach your shed to a garden wall.
You could also place breeze blocks inside to make it too heavy to lift. This will prevent your shed from blowing away on super windy days too!
5. Fit an Alarm
No matter how secure your shed is, there will be times when professional thieves will target your outbuilding. With the right knowledge and tools, they’ll be able to bypass many of your security efforts.
Fitting an alarm will be a great option to scare them away. You can place a motion sensor in the corner of your shed—along with a door sensor and a siren; you will be alarmed whenever an intruder is detected on time.
A wireless alarm is a better option as it won’t need to be hooked up to the mains.
6. Obscure Windows
Another thing that has to be prioritised, especially when we’re talking about your shed’s security is the windows. Apart from the doors, they are one of the weakest points in a shed’s security not to mention the door.
Through the windows, it will allow the criminal to easily peer inside to assess whether your shed is worth breaking into. So if your shed is purely used for storage, getting your windows done can be optional.
If there’s already a built-in window, you can completely block them out with stick-on thick security sheets. Installing blinds or curtain would be the safe bet if you need some natural lighting from the windows. Just make sure that they’re fully closed when you’re not inside.
7. Lock Large Items Together
To make it more challenging for the thieves to succeed in stealing your belongings, you can lock your large items, for instance—lawnmower, bike and hedge trimmer together.
8. Mark Your Belongings
If you’ve taken all the precautions listed above, then the chances of someone breaking into your shed and stealing your belongings is quite slim. Still, it’s better to be safe than sorry, so should the unthinkable happen, you can improve your chances of being reunited with any stolen items by marking them with a security system.
You could do this with something as simple as a UV pen that only shows up in UV light.
Why Opt for Metal Sheds?
Metal sheds are known for their durability and robust quality, making it an ideal choice if you wish to have a secure shed to store your valuable items.
They’re also designed to withstand the harsh elements and won’t suffer from, offering long-lasting garden storage all year round.
Considering metal is considered as a cheap shed material available on the market, metal sheds also make a great value for money. In fact, they are one of the popular choices for most household not only in the UK but also worldwide.
Unlike their wooden and plastic counterparts, metal sheds are low maintenance. They do not require painting, or sanding or even pest control. Moreover, the installation is relatively easy.
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