How to harden your home affordably!

[Twitchy]

And today I bring to the table another wonderful topic on how to harden parts of your home in the event of something happening... Somethings may be too expensive, some ridiculously cheap. Some may be improvised. Most of all, it will help post shtf!!

First! Ballistic protection:

Those pesky bullets... in the PAW, you never know what might be coming... A rather easy method of doing this is concrete planters placed in front of your home. When made with concrete and filled, depending on how tall you make them they can provide substantial protection for you in the event of a fire fight... (This is of course, also useful in hurricane situations... It creates less area that a missile (read flying 2X4) can penetrate. Hey, i beats using your car!) All in all ,this is a great method to have a small amount of ballistic protection and enhance the look of your home!

Another great idea if you live in a hurricane prone area that will also help post shtf, is laminated glass. You can get laminates for your windows. They offer very little, if any ballistic protection, however they will prevent an entire window from shattering. This stuff also resists baseball bats, crow bars, and a slew of other Melee based weaponry!

Another item for you to consider is kevlar window covers. These are extremely light weight, and provide excellent protection against flying debris during a storm. These are screwed into your structures framing on the outside of the window, providing extra protection and lessening the chance of glass breakage. But these ARE expensive... add this to your MNO list (Money No Object)

Something else to consider putting on your home, are dual use firefighting and water heating pipes on the top of your roof. This is especially useful if you have a possibly flammable roofing material such as wood, asphalt shingles, etc. This can lower your heating bill by reducing the electricity cost or propane cost for heating water for home use. A simple remotely operated valve attached to additional piping could be used to spread the water over your roof quickly to extinguish any flames present due to a lightning strike, radiant heat from another fire close by, etc.

Lawn sprinklers also function as a fire extinguisher if used on the exterior walls of your property.

I'll be adding more to this in additional posts. Let me know what you think so far, and as always, this is a non-exhaustive list! Add more to it!

[Dropy]

Great ideas there. I especially like the planter idea. Use fake plants and they are nearly worry free and can be filled fully with cement.

[Twitchy]

Great ideas there. I especially like the planter idea. Use fake plants and they are nearly worry free and can be filled fully with cement.

Eh, effective, very... however it would be rather expensive... maybe partially filled with a top layer of dirt for those that really look at it so it doesn't seem out of place...

[Sniper-T]

Being a steel worker, I have access to, and have collected piles of offcuts from different jobs. I have plates ranging from 16 Ga to 7/8" thick in everything from aA606 to ARS500. I have enough cut to size to effectively cover all the windows in my house, with enough left over to fortify most of the walls.

There really is no sense fortifying your windows if anyone with a chainsaw can slice and dice their way in. Or if anyone can shoot under or beside your window and have the bullet pass clean though the wall.

If anyone has access to large manufacturing companies, find out when their inventory is. We scrap 20-30 thousand pounds of steel every year, that can be bought for scrap rates. (pennies on the dollar)

I like the idea of the pipes on the roof for fire suppression. Not too sure how effective they'd be for heating though... at least not in my climate.

[Twitchy]

Being a steel worker, I have access to, and have collected piles of offcuts from different jobs. I have plates ranging from 16 Ga to 7/8" thick in everything from aA606 to ARS500. I have enough cut to size to effectively cover all the windows in my house, with enough left over to fortify most of the walls.

There really is no sense fortifying your windows if anyone with a chainsaw can slice and dice their way in. Or if anyone can shoot under or beside your window and have the bullet pass clean though the wall.

If anyone has access to large manufacturing companies, find out when their inventory is. We scrap 20-30 thousand pounds of steel every year, that can be bought for scrap rates. (pennies on the dollar)

I like the idea of the pipes on the roof for fire suppression. Not too sure how effective they'd be for heating though... at least not in my climate.

Good point on the climate... I might just have a project coming up

[mollypup]

There really is no sense fortifying your windows if anyone with a chainsaw can slice and dice their way in. Or if anyone can shoot under or beside your window and have the bullet pass clean though the wall.

Have to differ with ya here Sniper. Not every person desiring entrance will be carrying a chain saw. If they see they will be making a lot of noise or having to spend a lot of time breaking through the window barriers, be what they are, then I believe putting up barriers of any kind is much better than doing nothing. I have plywood to put over my windows plus a lot of chicken wire. I spend one morning placing several layers of chicken wire across a vulnerable window downstairs and though breaking the glass will be no problem, trying to cut through the chicken wire will be. It will be nearly impossible to kick out because of the layering and that I used some very heavy duty nails to secure it with. Even my husband had to admit he was impressed with my work!

Shooting is certainly possible, but I hope that doesn't happen. Can only do what we can do right?

[Sniper-T]

Scary thing is Mollypup... people are doing exactly that to break into homes around here. They drive around the well off subdivisions in the city with remote controls for garage doors. pressing the buttons and waiting to get lucky. Then They'll pull their truck right into the garage, cut through the connecting wall and haul out whatever they want. no farting around trying to get stuff out the door, or around corners.

But even if this isn't a concern... the point is still valid about reinforcing your windows, but not around them. any of the windows in my home are 2-4 feet from the floor. my walls are 2X6 construction with wood paneling on the outside, and drywall on the inside. doesn't matter if I use lexan or steel. a shot under the window will punch through both walls and take me out in the legs


Nice job on that window!!

And no... we cannot prepare for every contingency... we'd go broke or nuts or both trying. We can only do what we can do, and hope that in the end, it is enough

[mollypup]

O.k. Time to go downstairs and disconnect the garage door. I have some locks around here somewhere that I used to secure the garage door where I used to live. My husband will be royally pissed, but a girl's gotta do......yadda yadda ya.

[The Stig]

And no... we cannot prepare for every contingency... we'd go broke or nuts or both trying. We can only do what we can do, and hope that in the end, it is enough

Exactly.

Agree with Mollypup about taking reasonable steps to secure the home depending on the type and duration of SHTF event. A thug looking at house A that has some precautions and house B that has none, is likely to chose to ransack house B.

That said, it is folly to think you can turn your suburban stick-built home into a fortress. I remember a thread on another forum with people talking about adding firing positions and a cupola on their roof to repel invaders. Absolute insanity, but of course that is what you get when people fixate on Mad-Max style meltdowns.

Drywall and insulation does zip, zero, nada to slow down most bullets. A 5.56x45 might start to breakup as it penetrates the drywall but is still a threat to those in the home. 9mm and .40 will zip through the front walls and out the back sans a hit on a steel pipe. So while you are running around playing GI Joe a round can take you out without the bad guys getting anywhere near your home.

That's before you consider the threat from fire. During a localized event all it would take is someone tossing a roadflare next to your home to create big problems, especially if you are in a dry, fire prone, area.

So there's a balance. Yes, we should beef up our homes against threats from mundane day-to-day types to deal with short term situations. Window laminate, as was mentioned in the OP is a good idea both now and in the midst of a bad situation. But to think you'll turn your house into Fort Apache is a waste of time and resources.

[mollypup]

Well, with so many millions of houses across the country to break into, hopefully none of ours will be touched.