Keep Your Home from Being a Target While You’re Away
A house left untouched for a week is a beacon to bad actors. There are a lot of warning signs. The lights stay off at night, and the shades are in the same spot on Friday as they were on Monday. Anyone walking by can tell. That’s a common worry for families heading out for Thanksgiving or a week of winter break. You can ask a neighbor to check in, but your house can do a lot of the work itself. A smart home can run your lights, shades, and TV on a daily routine while you’re gone, and your security system covers the rest. Once it’s set up, you don’t have to do anything. Here’s how it works.
Is Your Home Prepared for Shorter Days?
Lights are the first thing a passerby notices, so start there. If you have your outdoor lights on at a fixed time, as daylight saving time ends, and the sunset jumps an hour earlier, your house gets left in the dark much longer. On the Alarm.com platform, lighting schedules can follow sunrise and sunset, so porch lights and living room lamps come on right when it gets dark. Shade schedules can follow the sun, too.
Control4 goes a step further with a feature called Mockupancy. It tracks your lighting, shade movement, and TV use. When you leave and set the system to Away, it replays those routines with slightly varied timing, to give your home a more natural lived-in look.
Shades and Screens Mimic Your Daily Life
Shades that never move are a common giveaway that a home is unoccupied. Direct motorized shades to open in the morning and close at dusk on their own, to give your home a more natural look from the street.
A television glowing in a front room adds another detail. With a system like Control4, the TV can run on the same replayed routine as your lights. Our team can also start low-volume music in the main living space, one more small sign of life for anyone who walks up to the door.
The goal is a home that looks the way it always does. If your family usually eats around six, the kitchen lights should come on around then. You get there by building routines from your real habits and having them tested before you leave for the airport.
Back Your Routines Up With Locks and Monitoring
These standard routines help set a basic safety protocol, but we still recommend more security measures to protect you from active threats and keep you connected while you’re away. Start off with smart locks you can control from an app on your phone. From anywhere with an internet connection, check that a door is locked, and lock it remotely if it isn't. Cameras show you who's at the front door, and video verification can confirm what triggered an alarm before help is sent.
Professional UL monitoring is the layer that responds when something goes wrong. If your alarm trips, a trained operator at a UL-listed central station gets the signal. They call you, and if needed, they send police or fire to your door. That happens around the clock, whether you’re asleep upstairs or on a plane. Your phone gets an alert too, so you know what’s going on.
Westco Security & Technology programs common routine scenes and bolsters them with a monitored security system. We'll test everything with you before departure day and show you how to run it from your phone. Contact our team here or send us a message below to schedule a no-obligation consultation before your next trip.
