Alarms… Do you ever pay attention to neighbour’s alarms, car or house?

Most people ignore them and if it’s middle of the night they just get annoyed and moan in the morning that their alarm kept them up all night. Who actually calls the cops or goes and checks it out?

Though obviously another matter when it’s your alarm but a lot of the time thefts occur when you are not home, for obvious reasons.

Modern alarms are pretty clever… dialers and inbuilt CCTV in the PIR and can be controlled remotely.

Don’t rely on your neighbors to tell you – let the alarm earn its keep and call you.

I’d take a determined thief to stay in a shed with an additional siren mounted on the wall, damn thing makes my ears bleed (well almost)

May be we need a poll… how many people have had their bikes stolen from sheds / outbuildings when they were asleep?

I rigged my shed with booby traps. “There is nothing wrong with storing pEtrol and fireworks in a shed” is what the fire investigation people said so the police dropped the manslaughter charges. The titanium components survived the fire but the scrote did not.

My shed was broken into last year. The first time they unscrewed the hinges and took nothing but I moved the bikes to my parents while I upgraded the shed.

Before I had chance to do anything they came back and got in by fiddling with the Yale lock. They had my chainsaw.

I now have a bloody good mortice lock that isn’t obvious as I just drilled a hole where the key goes in. I have swapped to heavy duty internal hinges so they can’t get to them and have reinforced the door. I have heavily used builders band on the already quite secure roof. I already had a ground anchor and big motorbike chain.

I am going to put some hinge bolts and deadlocks on it to finish securing the building. I am having a metal cage built that will go in the shed and will be bolted to the floor and wall, this will fit at least two bikes inside and will have two padlocks on and a hole in the floor for my ground anchor so they can be chained inside and to the cage.

Even with serious tools it will take a good effort to get to the bikes.

I’m moving to a tiny house with no room for bikes

I don’t know if its better to try and make the existing shed more secure or get one of those asgard jobbies

We don’t have a garage or space for one so at the moment I keep my bikes in the mother-in-law’s celler. Safe, but a real ball ache when I want my bike (although it’s only 5 mins away).

I’m thinking of building a block built ‘shed’ in the bottom of the garden – basically a block built chalet with double glazing etc. It would double as extra storage for the house/possible future office too.

I believe that if you keep a footprint of less than 15sqm and lower than 2.5m in height that you don’t need planning (might be wrong though).

Costed it at apx £2k (self build) which seems like a lot, but doesn’t seem that bad for adding what will efectively be another room to the house.

Anyone done something similar?

Stu.

Not sure how this thread morphed from one requesting help on improving shed security into one asking the OP to justify why he has a shed in the first place!!

Everybody’s circumstances are different, the houses they live in, the type of person their partners are, there disposable income, the area they live etc etc.

If the guy thinks the best solution for him is a shed then let the poor bloke use a freaking shed.

Some helpful advice:

If the shed is screwed together, drill out all the external screw heads so they cant easily be removed with a cordless drill.

Stu – Yes, I’ve just done this – last summer.
Mine is 14.6m2 and 2.4m high.
I cast a concrete base, then built the walls from 7nm blocks, it is lined in 24mm celotex, covered in 11mm SBS board.
The roof is packed with celotex, and loft insulation between the joists, and clad in Galvanised steel sheet.
It has 1 x small double glazed unit, and a white, powder coated steel security door from ebay.
I’ve not finished the electrics yet, but so far it has cost just over 3k – I did everything myself, except laying the blocks, which cost me £400..

We costed up good quality wooden sheds, but decided this offered better value for money, as it could also work really well as a garden office, or studio.

Freeagent – that sounds very very similar to my thoughts. I hadn’t costed in wall insulation as am considering building a block cavity wall and having the internal walls either mostly covered in cupboards, or plastered (can’t do plastering so I’d need to cost that in also).

Was thinking of felt covered 18mm ply for the roof, but have reservations whether it would be secure enough. If you don’t mind me asking, how much did it cost for the steel roof?

Might pick your brains more when I get closer to starting if that’s ok with you?

Post a pic when it’s done, would like to see how it turns out.

Thanks,

Stu.

Hi Stu –
The roof came from Accord steel cladding – it cost £490 inc delivery/VAT.
It was cut to size, and supplied with everything needed to fit it.
I was very happy with it, and would use them again.
I bought 2nd grade Celotex boards from http://www.secondsandcoscotland.co.uk/
I think 8′ x 4′ sheets worked out about £10 each.

Hope this helps –

jools182

Without knowing what’s there it’s hard to say whether trying to convert it is sensible.

Personally, I’d be inclined to start again and integrate multiple layers of different types of descreet enhancements – see my first reply on page 1.

Thought I would update this in case anybody is interested.

I have had this made at work. It is to go inside the shed and is seriously strong. It will be pretty hard for the thieves to get into this. It has bi-folding doors and a built in anchor point so I can chain my bikes to it. It bolts to the floor and wall and has two padlock points. This is to ad to subtle strengthening and extra security to stop thieves getting into the shed in the first place.

IAche, how much?

All I paid for us the hinges as we had the steel lying around. I could probably get a price for you if you’re interested and at whatever size you wanted. Mine is 2m wide 1.35m high and 0.74 deep. I would have liked it deeper but couldn’t because of the shed door width. I think I will be able to squeeze my road bike in there too.