The Story

One of the neighbours knocked on our door the other day. No, it's not the very unfriendly one who keep throwing fallen twigs and branches over the fence just because the tree is on our side of the fence, it's one of the better ones and thank God most of them are like that in the neighbourhood...

They told us someone broke into their house on a windy Friday night. The couple were watching tele in the family room downstairs (from around 9 pm to 1 am) and their 2 school age kids were sleeping upstairs in their own room. The intruder somehow climbed up the roof of family room from the backyard undetected, removed the fly screen from the guest bedroom window, forced the "closed and locked" sliding window open, sneaked into the main bedroom, took some valuable stuffs, and left the house probably also using the same path. And they didn't even notice it until the husband found the fly screen on the floor in the backyard next morning.

We all thought it would be a disaster if the intruder enter either of the kids' room and accidentally woke up the kid - hope they would be smart enough not to scream or make any noise - this would be a very important thing to teach/remind your kids...

Why bother?
You might think most new houses have alarm installed and this shouldn't be a major issue. Don't forget that for situations like my neighbour's, the alarm isn't even on yet. Also, we all know that most alarms can be configured to only monitor downstairs while family members were sleeping in bedrooms upstairs, if intruder entered the house through upstairs windows, it's basically useless...

A few things I can think of...
Please note that I am NOT an expert on home security, you should always consult your builder or some security specialist for professional advice. This post is just to share some of my thoughts...

If you are still in design and planning phase, a reminder for you to think and check whether any of your upstairs windows can be easily accessed from outside (normally through roof of rooms downstairs), would suggest to change it if possible.

If you are way over that phase, a few things below might help too, please be patient and read on :-)

If you are using awning window, it should be safer as I think it's much more difficult to enter from outside for awning window (just guessing as I don't have awning windows, please correct me if you think this is incorrect). For sliding windows, there are quite a few options:

1) install window locks, google for "window locks" and you should be able to get lots of information.

One of the simplest ones are locks like below, personally I don't quite like it as I have seen windows been scratched and the paint came off due to this lock.