In brief
The security of a house is not one device but several layers set one behind another: the fence with its gate and pedestrian gate, the shell of the building with its windows, doors and garage, the door to the bedroom wing, and finally the people who hold keys and codes. Each of those layers is there to give time and a signal to the next, because none of them stops anybody for ever. The decisions about them are made at different points of the build, from the floor plan to the window order, and after the plastering most of them can no longer be undone. Here I write about what to require from each layer and when the time for it comes. I design, choose and supply the security measures, and along the way I make sure those decisions are made in time and that what ends up in the house is what was required of it.
Why secure a house in layers
I like building invisible fortresses: different layers of security, and something that really will be secure in every respect. But I will not write an article with detailed solutions, because although people do not know who my clients are, somebody who wanted it badly enough could dig out whom I have built such residences for. So I stay at the level of requirements: what has to be settled, what to ask, and at which stage of the build the time for it comes.
A layer works because it assumes from the outset that the previous one will be beaten, and that assumption is deliberate. Barriers – the fence, the wall, the window and the door – do not stop anybody who has enough time and tools; they delay. Detection, for its part, delays nothing; it only raises the alarm. And the response is people who have to get there, and the time they take to arrive is the one number everything else is fitted to. If somebody gets over the fence unnoticed and the first sensor sits on a window, the signal comes when that somebody is already standing at the house, and the whole walk across the plot is lost. If, on the other hand, the barriers are strong but the sensors only speak up in the bedroom, the time was there; nobody counted it.
Hence the order in which I talk about it: first the plot boundary, then the shell of the building, then the bedroom wing, and finally the people with access. Every problem you can think of can be solved in several ways – hacking into the cameras or the alarm system included. The only question is where convenience ends, where security begins, where the happy medium lies and what we are really afraid of. Without an answer to that last question you buy devices, not layers.
The plot boundary – fence, gate, pedestrian gate
Most people treat the fence as part of the garden, and that is how it gets into the design. For me it does several things at once. It says where private ground begins. It forces anybody who wants to come in either to go through the gate or the pedestrian gate – the places you control – or to get over an obstacle, which takes time and can be seen. It is where the first layer of detection and the lighting go. And it delays, although it will not stop anybody who has come with intent, because there are no such fences.
At the site plan stage (the part of the design that places the house, the drive and the fence on the plot) I ask about four things. Whether you can see from the house who is standing at the gate before anybody opens it, from a window or on a screen. Whether the pedestrian gate is separate from the vehicle gate, so that a courier does not open up access to the area where the cars are parked. Whether power and cable routes reach the plot boundary, because without them detection on the fence stays on paper, and the gate has to be openable by hand when the power is out. And whether somebody has read the garden design for what will screen the pedestrian gate and the camera in a few years’ time, because a hedge takes a long time to grow and on the drawing nobody sees it at its final size.
A high, solid wall comes up in these conversations more often than I expected. It gives privacy, and the privacy is real. Only a wall protects in both directions: it screens somebody who is already inside just as well as it screens you, so behind a solid fence detection within the grounds stops being an extra. (The neighbour who can see your gate is part of the system, although nobody asked him, and behind a wall he is gone.)
The decision about this layer comes earliest of all, because once the paving and the drive are laid, it is closed. When the paving is laid, the necessary ducts have to be remembered – for the intercom cables to the pedestrian gate and the gate, for instance, or for the cables to the garden lights – and that is advice I give on every build. With a residence, add power and a route for detection along the boundary, which are things you have to know about before the block paving goes down. The height and form of the fence are also governed by regulations and the local zoning plan, and the designer checks that before the drawing reaches me.
The shell of the house – windows, doors, garage
The shell of the building is the layer clients know most about, and the one where it is easiest to make an expensive mistake. The mistake is buying a class and believing you have bought a layer.
Classes describe whom a barrier holds off in a test, and for how long: from somebody shouldering and kicking to somebody with power tools, with the time counted in laboratory minutes, not in the minutes of a real event. In Poland that language is the burglar-resistance classes for doors and windows under the EN 1627 standard, separate classes for glass and separate grades for alarm systems. It is a good language, because the designer, the manufacturer, the integrator and the insurer all speak it. Which class to require I will not say in a text, because the class is chosen for a particular house, and describing that choice would mean describing a standard I do not show publicly. What I will give you instead is three things that most often get lost in that language.
The first is that a class applies to a complete, tested assembly. The leaf, the frame, the lock, the hardware and the glass are tested together and receive the class together. The glass has its own class under a separate standard, and the hardware its own, but those component classes do not give the complete window a burglar-resistance class, and the standard says so clearly. If somebody shows you a glass certificate as a window certificate, they are showing you half a document.
The second is that the test standards stop at the product. The class applies to a window or a door tested in a defined configuration; how the frame is anchored in the masonry is something the standard no longer covers. So the class arrives on site on a pallet, and whether it stays in the wall depends on the installation. Good installation will not give an ordinary window a class, but bad installation can take away the protection a good one was tested for. With ordinary houses the sentence “installation matters more than the product itself” is advice; with windows and doors that carry a burglar-resistance class it becomes a requirement. That is why, when the windows and doors are handed over, I check not only that the leaves move and the seals close, but also that the frames sit the way the manufacturer’s installation instructions describe. That part of the class is my responsibility, because the factory finished its part on the pallet.
The third is that a layer is defined by its weakest opening. Glazing in a door usually lowers its burglar-resistance class on paper, and that matters to the insurer. In practice a door with a small glazed panel does not suddenly become an easy target, because the glass will not help a burglar much; the locks matter far more. Somebody who wanted to use glass to get in would most likely choose a window anyway, probably one at the side of the building, somewhere less visible. That is why the question of the class comes second, and the first is: do all the accessible openings offer the same level of protection – the ground-floor windows, the terrace doors, the fanlight above the entrance, the garage door? A residence has many of those openings and a lot of glass, so a very strong front door next to an ordinary terrace window is one strong spot, not a layer.
Then there are two things clients usually do not know. If the garage is connected to the house, it is worth making the door between them burglar-resistant: apart from the fact that the garage is the easiest place to break into, such a door is far tighter than a standard internal door, so less of the garage smell gets into the house. The second thing is roller shutters. They are commonly called burglar-resistant, but in most cases they do not do that job – unless you order a product that has actually been given a burglar-resistance class in testing. External venetian blinds are no obstacle to anybody who wants to get in through a window, although they have other merits.
One more item is ordered together with the windows: opening sensors built into the frames at the factory. They are an item in the window quote, not in the alarm quote, which is why they are forgotten most often; I describe how a whole layer of detection is built from them in the text on the alarm system.
When is the decision about this layer made? Once, when the windows and doors are ordered. After that there is only replacement, and nobody plans to replace the windows of a finished house twice.
The bedroom door – the bedroom wing as a layer
The house has one more boundary, inside. The architect draws it for a different reason than I do: the living areas, the guest rooms and the service rooms on one side, the bedrooms on the other, and what he is after is quiet and privacy. For me that same boundary is the last barrier in front of people, and at night the only one that matters, because by then all the others are behind you.
For that boundary to be a layer, it has to exist physically: one door that separates the whole bedroom wing from the rest of the house, can be locked to prevent entry from the living areas, and opens from the inside with one movement, without looking for a key. Then what the alarm world calls night arming guards a real boundary, because the system watches over the rest of the house while you sleep, and the boundary it guards is something you can touch. What class that door should be depends on the particular house. What matters more is that there is somewhere to put it at all.
And that is a decision from the floor plan, the first sketches, before the structure is designed. A bedroom wing with a single entrance, with no passage from the garage and no second door as a shortcut, is something no door can add to a finished house. The same logic shapes the rest of the layout: the garage is a buffer, not an extension of the interior, the living areas and the guest rooms lie between it and the bedroom wing, and that is why the door from the garage into the house is taken more seriously than the other internal doors.
If the house is to have a panic room, it stands in this wing. Panic rooms are among the projects I carry out; I write about them separately in the text on the panic room, and here the only thing that matters is that it is the last layer and that the way to it leads through the door described above.
I would rather a family locked that door out of habit than out of fear. When the door is in the right place, that is exactly what it looks like: it gets locked like the front door, without thinking.
Detection and response – the three texts that tie this together
I write about the alarm, the cameras and the panic room separately; here it is only about how those three sit between the layers. Detection makes nothing harder – that is the job of the barriers described above. It is there to raise the alarm, ideally before anybody touches a barrier, and wherever that can be done without false alarms. And the response is people: the monitoring station, the patrol, the neighbour on the list, you. The time it takes them to be at the gate is the one number all the layers have to be fitted to, which is why the conversation about it takes place at the start, not after the equipment has been ordered. How the layers of detection are arranged, and why the house has to arm without somebody else’s server, is in the text on the alarm; where the camera footage goes I describe in the text on CCTV.
People and keys
In a residence the last layer is the people who hold keys, codes and permissions: the household, the staff, the service engineers, the gardener, the pool company, the guests. The list is long, and it changes from year to year. It is also the one layer you do not buy once, because it has to be run.
The rule is simple: everybody has as much access as their work needs, and not one key more. The pool engineer does not need a key to the bedroom wing, and the cleaner does not need the code that disarms the whole house.
A mechanical key has one problem: whoever has it gets in, and usually no trace is left. After one lost key from a bunch that opens everything, the cylinders in the whole house are changed. So the least I require of a mechanical key is that it cannot be copied at the first key-cutting counter – a protected profile, with copies issued only against the card. And of electronic access control I require three things: a permission is assigned to a named person, it can be withdrawn without changing the lock, and it works without the manufacturer’s server, for the same reason I require that of the alarm. There is also one thing you would rather know before installation: fitting a reader or an electronic lock to a door with a burglar-resistance class changes a tested assembly, so the door manufacturer is consulted before the installer picks up a drill.
With the systems of a house, I set things up so that the client can do as much as possible himself, without the risk of breaking anything, and so that he can be helped, or something put right, if need be; he also gets a video guide, so that he can manage on his own. The service code is not the owner’s code. Once the house has been handed over, only the owner has access to its systems, and above all to its security, until the owner grants that access to somebody. As standard I do not keep access of my own: it stays only if you ask for it, because that is more convenient for you, or for as long as work is still going on, and then I cut it off so that it physically ceases to exist until you grant it again. The details depend on the system and the situation. The fewer people from outside the household have access to the house, the shorter the list of people in this layer; I write about the automation, and about why the list of functions comes before the back boxes, in the text on home automation.
The layer of people starts, in fact, long before the move – it starts on the building site. Your house is built by a permanent core team and proven subcontractors, tradesmen I have worked with for years and chose personally, and everybody who comes onto the site is known by name.
The rest is procedure, and I write about it without suspecting anybody, because good staff prefer clear rules themselves. Somebody keeps a register of who has which key and which code. A permission is withdrawn on the same day somebody stops working for you, and after every service visit it is known what has been left behind: which account, which access and what knowledge. The house documentation is held by a known number of people, and the family knows what to do when the phone rings at night. And there is one thing no system will deal with: the rhythm of a house that can be read from the street or on social media. I have collected answers to common questions about privacy and discretion in the Questions section.
Requirements, the design and the insurer
In this field roles are easily confused: the alarm company will gladly answer the question about doors too, and the door manufacturer the one about the alarm. That is why I set the requirements for each layer with you before the design exists, and I choose the solutions for them myself – from standard ones to very advanced ones – looking after your interests and nobody else’s. The architect turns those requirements into the plan: where the boundary of the bedroom wing runs, where the garage stands, where the entrance is and how the fence relates to the house. And the insurer reads the same classes and grades.
The insurer should not be left until the end. Nothing ever protects completely, but the point is to choose the policy knowingly and to know its scope and its limits. The policy conditions contain requirements for the security measures, and failing to meet them can end in a refused or reduced payout – which only comes out after the loss. With a residence the insurer may well want to see the house and set conditions of its own, which is why that conversation should not be put off until after handover.
The layers start working before you move in, too. To insure a house under construction against theft, the building usually has to be at what we call the closed shell stage, meaning that all the windows, the doors and the garage door have been fitted. Often you also need an alarm and a signed contract with a security company; the exact conditions depend on the policy. On a residence build both appear anyway, but the moment when that happens follows from the schedule and is planned together with the date the windows and doors go in.
Along the way I tie together the trades that would not otherwise talk to each other, because the window manufacturer does not know that somebody is waiting for his sensors, and the fencing crew does not know that somebody had planned a cable there. And I check and accept what has been built against what was required: with the certificate for the assembly and the installation record in hand, because those are the documents the loss adjuster asks for after a claim.
When each decision is made
The simplest way to remember it is by the stages of the build, because that is the whole point of layers: each has its moment, and after it things get expensive or impossible.
Before the design, the requirements are set: the risk profile and the level of protection. At the concept and floor-plan stage the decisions are the bedroom wing with a single entrance, the position of the garage, a lockable equipment room and a panic room if there is to be one. The site plan brings in the fence, the gate, the pedestrian gate, sightlines, planting and the routes at the boundary.
At the structural stage comes whatever cannot be laid in just in case: reinforced partitions, if the profile calls for them. With the paving, the ducts at the plot boundary go in. With the electrical installation, before the plastering, go the routes for the alarm, the cameras and the access control, together with power, brought to the room where the control panels will stand. The window and door order specifies the classes of the complete assemblies, the glass, the opening sensors in the windows and the installation instructions I will hold the crew to.
Somewhere around here comes the moment when the house can be locked for the first time. Once we have a closed shell and nobody uninvited can easily get inside, it is a good time to see to the utility connections. That is also a turning point for security, because the building site is no longer open ground and what is on it can now be insured.
At the fit-out, the door to the bedroom wing and the door from the garage into the house are fitted. Before handover, the codes, the accounts, the key register, the contract with the monitoring station and the family’s procedures are put in order. After handover what remains is managing the last layer, because people and keys have no handover date.
Can all of this be added to a finished house? Part of it, yes: an alarm can be wireless, camera cables can run in trunking, locks can be replaced. The layout of the bedroom wing, the partitions in the structure and windows with a burglar-resistance class can be added only badly, or not at all. That is the reason I bring this conversation up before the design, while everything is still on paper.
When layers are the wrong answer – and what I do not promise
The first case is when a simpler arrangement gives the same result. If the house stands where a neighbour can see your gate and the family hardly ever goes away, three layers of detection and a burglar-resistant door to the bedroom wing may be the answer to a problem you do not have. That is why the conversation starts with the question of what we are defending against, not with a catalogue of devices, and it is the answer to it that sets the requirements for all the layers.
The second case is when a layer gets in the way of living. A door that takes three movements to unlock stays open. A gate that takes too long to open stays open. A system that gets in the household’s way is switched off faster than anybody could defeat it, and then it exists on paper and not in reality. This is where the question of the happy medium between convenience and security comes back, because that line is drawn once, in the design, and paid for every day.
The third case is when security narrows down to a single threat. More of the houses I know have been flooded than broken into. A pipe bursts because of a manufacturing defect or a pressure surge in the water main, and it also happens that the pressure sensor and the safety valve in the boiler fail at the same time. Leak detection with a valve that shuts off the water by itself, smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, and power that does not disappear with the storm are layers too, only of a different category and with their own standards. The insurance policy is the other side of the same decision: it protects you when, for instance, a pipe bursts, which is why it is worth spending a few hours on choosing it knowingly.
One rule joins both categories: what is closed to an intruder has to be open for escape, and an escape route cannot need a key from the inside.
That leaves what I do not promise. No layer will stop somebody who has come with intent and with time, because each of them only delays, and that is the whole point of it. Nor will I name a class or a grade for you in a text, because they are chosen for a particular house. And I will not tell anybody, publicly or privately, what these layers look like in particular clients’ homes – I do not talk about my clients, and every contract of mine starts with that.
What I ask before I say yes
- What exactly are we defending against?
- Does the bedroom wing have a single entrance and a door that can be locked, and is that settled in the floor plan before the structure is designed?
- Do all the accessible openings offer the same level of protection, fanlights and the garage door included?
- Does the class apply to the tested window or door assembly, and do I have the manufacturer’s installation instructions to hold the crew to?
- Are there power and cable routes at the plot boundary, and can the gate be seen from the house before somebody opens it?
- Who holds which keys and codes, how are they withdrawn, and whose is the administrator account of each system?
- Does the escape route open from the inside without a key, even when everything else is locked?
Frequently asked questions
How do I plan the security of a house before the design exists?
From the question of what you are defending against, and from the floor plan; the shop comes last. First we establish what you are really afraid of, then the architect draws the bedroom wing, the garage and the entrance so that the layers have somewhere to stand, and the site plan gets the fence, the gate and the routes at the boundary. The devices come last and are the easiest part. If the house already stands, you start from the same question, only part of the answer will be a compromise.
Which burglar-resistance class should I choose for doors and windows?
I do not settle that in a text. A class describes whom a barrier is meant to hold off, and for how long, so I choose it for a particular house and for what it is meant to protect against. In an article I can say this much: the class has to apply to the complete assembly, all the accessible openings have to offer the same level of protection, and the installation has to follow the manufacturer’s instructions, because the standard stops at the product.
Does a high wall make a house safer?
It increases privacy and delays entry, but it also screens whoever is already inside. Behind a solid fence, detection within the grounds stops being an extra, and a view of the gate from the house becomes a requirement. The height and form of the fence are also governed by regulations and the local zoning plan, which the designer checks.
Can security layers be added to a finished house?
Some of them, yes: an alarm, cameras, new locks, access control. The layout of the bedroom wing, reinforcement in the structure and windows and doors with a burglar-resistance class can be added only badly, or not at all, because those are design decisions. So in a finished house you start with people and procedures – the layer that needs no chasing of walls and is most often the weakest.
If you are planning a house in which security is to be worked out together with the design rather than added after the plastering, this is a good moment for a conversation. Let’s talk about your project.