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Tips on Locks and Security for Your Bike Shed
According to a recent study, 60% of the half a million bicycles stolen in the UK every year are taken from the immediate vicinity of the cyclist's home. This means that the bike shed, garage or wherever else you store your bike is a major target for thieves, and as such you should take all available measures to make it as secure as possible. This article offers some tips for how you might do that.
Cycling is now one of the most popular hobbies and methods of commuting in the UK. As such, people often spend several hundreds if not thousands of pounds on their bikes, meaning that they are among the most lucrative items for burglars to steal and then sell on.
The first and most obvious point to make when discussing security for your bike is that you should under no circumstances leave your bike outside in your garden (even if it is hidden from the street) overnight. One common tactic used by burglars is to check every garden in a street and load any bikes they find into a van, before driving on to the next street and doing the same again.
The absolute safest option is indoors, but this is practical only for the lucky few cyclists who have abundant space in their house or apartment to keep a bike. For most of us, the next best solution is to have a bike shed to store bikes and any other large valuables that don't fit in the house. In fact, many insurers now demand that policy holders store their bike indoors or in a bike shed, or they will not cover it should it get stolen.
As for securing the shed from intruders, it is almost always the case that the standard locks that come with sheds are next to useless regarding Locksmith Greenwich CT. The sensible thing to do is to replace it with your own good quality padlock and hasp as soon as possible.
To be on the safe side, even inside a shed the bikes themselves should also be locked with a heavy duty bike lock, just in case anyone does manage to get past the shed locks. Cyclists often prefer to use lighter bike locks because of the weight of carrying it around with them, but if it's just for the shed then it makes sense to get the heaviest one you can, so that any thieves would need some serious cutting equipment to break through it.
One increasingly popular alternative to a shed is a specially designed bike storage box. These are metal containers with room for 3 or 4 bikes inside. The big advantage of storage boxes is that they take up less space, making them ideal for people living in city homes with small gardens. With a heavy duty padlock and an anchor to prevent then being towed away, these boxes can be the equal of a shed in terms of security.
Ultimately, when deciding on how to store your bike, you always need to weigh the expense of security against the potential expense of having the bike stolen. If it is a tired decade-old mountain bike, you may decide to risk leaving it in the garden. But if it is a top of the range model, then it makes a lot of sense to take all the necessary precautions to keep thieves from getting their hands on it.