In this episode of Ready Radio, host John Rush discusses important end-of-year considerations for homeowners with guest Dave Hart from Roof Savers of Colorado. As the year wraps up, many homeowners face renewing insurance policies that have undergone significant changes. John and Dave break down the crucial updates in insurance policies related to roof coverage, highlighting the need for homeowners to stay informed and proactive in protecting their investments.
SPEAKER 04 :
This is Ready Radio, preparing you to be ready for anything, now.
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Here’s your survival guide for Ready Radio, John Rush. And it is Ready Radio, KLZ 560. Thanks for joining us today. Fabulous day, December the 20th, as we head down the stretch into Christmas and New Year’s. If you are listening to a replay show, thank you, by the way, for that as well. And one thing I want to do today as we sort of get things closed out here, for the year. We’ve only got a couple of shows left for this year. Actually, one show left for the year is all I wanted to bring Dave Hart on from Roof Savers of Colorado, one of our great sponsors. And Dave, welcome. How are you, sir? I am doing great. How are you guys doing today? We’re doing great. And part of why I wanted to have you on was, A, we talk about… some roofing and things like that. But typically, Dave, as we get to a new year, and I’ve already heard from different insurance agents on my end on different things that I have going on and so on, it’s sort of that time of the year where those things come up. Now, I get it, not everybody renews in January, but a lot of folks will have a renewal here probably in the next one to three months, Dave. That’s kind of how things work typically. So Along those lines, the one thing you and I talk about quite often that we don’t get a chance to talk about as much on air as we probably should is the changes in that end of things as far as house insurance goes.
SPEAKER 10 :
100%, yeah. Yeah, so things are definitely changing. I mean, just even a simple example with my own personal policy, we went from a $1,000 deductible to a 2%, so it’s now almost $10,000 deductible for wind and hail. And that’s happening across the board. Maybe not quite that extreme, but a lot of carriers are dealt with at $2,500, $5,000, 1%. So every carrier is different. And it’s to be expected. I mean, we’ve had so much paid out the last few years due to hail. You know, the interest companies, they’re not a nonprofit. They’re looking at their bottom line.
SPEAKER 05 :
That’s right.
SPEAKER 10 :
Absolutely. There’s that, but then what they’re also doing is, you know, you’re getting roofs that are 10 years old, 12 years old, maybe 15, again, depending on who the carrier is. And if something were to happen, they’re saying, okay, we’re going to give you ACV, which stands for actual cash value. Basically, it’d be like taking your car at five years old. They’re going to give you what that car is worth and not what you paid for it or what it costs to replace.
SPEAKER 07 :
So let me, so make sure I’m following you correctly. You take a roof that’s, 15 years old, you have a life expectancy of, let’s say, 20 years. At that point, they figure three-quarters of the life is gone. If it’s a $20,000 roof, then you may get $5,000 out of it when it’s all said and done, not the full $20,000. Am I right? Correct.
SPEAKER 10 :
So now you have to come up with $10,000 or $15,000 out of pocket to cover your deductible portion, plus cover what it costs to replace the roof, the depreciation that you would normally get that you’re not now. And so people are like, you know, I guess, $10,000, $15,000 to get my roof replaced now. And it’s happening quite frequently.
SPEAKER 07 :
Really quick along those lines, too, Dave. And again, maybe you can answer this, maybe you can’t. But I’m guessing if you shop online and so on, I already know that answer. But when you’ve got an actual agent and or a company where you’re… And you may not even talk to the agent, but you just get a renewal. Are they making I mean, is there like a a flyer along with the new statement that says, here’s the changes to your policy or is it just getting changed? And if people aren’t paying attention, they’re going to miss out on the fact that it did change.
SPEAKER 10 :
It’s just getting changed. Some companies will send something out, but the vast majority, you’ll see the changes on your renewal. Got it. So, I’ve been telling people, it’s very important. Read it. Even call your agent now. If your renewal is next month or six months down the road, what’s going to happen when I renew? What do things look like? So, you can be prepared for it. Make any necessary adjustments you need to. It’s pretty much across the board. For the most part, most carriers… are going at that 15-year-old range, you’re fully depreciated. So there’s nothing left coming.
SPEAKER 07 :
So I need to use a 10-year example, not a 15-year example.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, exactly. So that’s what’s happening. So it’s been very challenging for us to be completely open and honest with, okay, you have hail damage, you don’t have hail damage, or you have moderate hail damage. And just some of the challenges we’re having, we want to be very clear, open, and honest with our clients. But if there’s any chance that we can get it replaced, you know, affordably now, this is the time to do it. That way you have another 10 years before they start, you know.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, no, and that’s, again, partly why I want to have you on as well as, A, I was just talking to Charlie a moment ago about what an absolutely beautiful day it is outside right now. Fact is, you know, with what you do, you have the ability on days like today to literally handle any roofing needs somebody has. I think a lot of folks have this misconception, oh, I can’t do anything in the winter months, it’s too cold. A day like today, Dave, you can do whatever you want to.
SPEAKER 10 :
Oh, man, we’ve got three treatments scheduled for tomorrow. Me and one of my other guys, we’re outside the shop right now painting corner trim for a siding job that we’re doing up at Loveland. I mean, this is fantastic.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, well, I’ve always said and tell my boys constantly, if it’s not snowing, it needs to be this. So I’m fine, too. This is great. I’d rather have this than anything else because that’s just bitter, cold, wind-blowing, and so on. With no snow, it doesn’t do anybody any good. Okay, so… On the insurance side, folks need to really look at, pay attention to what’s going on. There’s a lot of, again, misconceptions, because the last thing we want, Dave, is for folks to have some sort of a storm problem. You know, they get damaged. All of a sudden, they call you. You come out, look at it, and realize, you know, you have a 10-year-old roof, and your new policy says that that’s now prorated, meaning at the end of the day, you’re likely to pay for the majority of this replacement. Correct. Yeah, correct.
SPEAKER 10 :
It’s crazy what’s happening. It’s unfortunate, but at the end of the day, it comes down to the bottom dollar with the insurance companies. But the other nice thing about it, too, is we also have options. It’s not just about replacing.
SPEAKER 07 :
Okay, I want to go with that. No, thank you. You’re going exactly in the direction I wanted to head. This is Ready Radio. We try to teach everybody to be prepared for the what-ifs of life. This just isn’t end-of-the-world stuff. This is everything daily, Dave, that we go through on a regular basis. And so the question I had for you, for folks that are listening, given the fact of these changes and the now – I think it’s always been important, but especially now, the utter importance of making sure that you’re maintaining your roof the best you can so you’re getting the longest life out of it. What does that mean for most people? In other words, what should they be doing?
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, we definitely take a look and see the condition, but we offer that roof rejuvenation treatment that we do. It’s a RoofMax product, so we just extend the life of that roof. There’s a lot of people. We’ve actually done a lot this year. We slightly over-doubled the amount of treatments we did this year over last year. And I’ll tell you, nationally speaking, this is growing. It works. We’ve secured more care.
SPEAKER 07 :
It’s growing because it works, Dave. It’s just, as you know, it’s a solid. I mean, I’ve had it done on my roof, family members, and so on. The product works, period.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, it works out real well. The reality is, with what insurance companies are doing, higher deductibles, less coverage, People aren’t going to be replacing those roofs. They don’t have $15,000, $20,000 sitting around to spend on a roof. So what do we do? We come in for a whole lot less money, get some more life out of the roof, and there’s chances that you’re not going to get covered. But just because you got some minor hail damage on it doesn’t mean we can’t get more life out of it. So it’s eliminating the need to call the insurance companies and get them involved. And we could save people a ton of money on it, keep the roofs where they belong on the house, not in a landfill, and just extend that life drastically. I mean, it’s fantastic. Like I said, we just secured more territory, so we’re growing like crazy. So it’s a neat option. We love having the option for our customers. Most roofing companies come out and they go, I’m here to replace your roof. Well, there’s a 98% chance we don’t have to replace that roof. There you go. If we do this treatment, do some minor maintenance to it, Get at least another five years. In a lot of cases, we’re getting 10 to 15 more years.
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Or longer. Yeah, I was going to say or longer, depending upon the roof. And, folks, again, I’m a big one on this, and Dave knows. In fact, I’m usually the one that is, you know, hey, Dave, it’s that time of year. We need our annual inspection done and so on because, Dave, as you know, I mean, just having some commercial properties and so on. It’s a big deal to me because it’s like your car. The more you keep up on those things and you stay in front of it, the less issues you’re going to have on down the road.
SPEAKER 10 :
Exactly. And on top of that, there’s so many people we come across that we go out and look at a roof and there is an issue. Like, oh, I had no idea. And I’m guilty of that with certain things, too. I’ll deal with it when it comes to life. But the reality is, I would say 30% of the roofs that we get on for a quick inspection there’s an issue with the roof that we need to take care of pretty quickly, and we’re able to do that. So it’s neat. I really enjoy extending the life of the roofs.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, Dave, I look at a roof, and we’ve chatted about this in the past, but for those of you that are listening, we do drive radio tomorrow. We do the car side of it and all of that, and I talk to people, Dave, there when it comes to the paint on the car and things along those lines. I look at your roof a lot like I look at my vehicle. If I don’t have to touch that factory paint and I can leave that on there as long as I possibly can, my feeling is I’ve got a much better vehicle when it’s all said and done than trying to have all of that redone. I could be wrong, but I feel like the roof on your house isn’t much different.
SPEAKER 10 :
If you look at it, this is probably a horrible analogy, but it just popped in my head. If you look at it, the roof on your house is much like the shell on a turtle, right? It’s covering, it’s protecting that turtle. It’s protecting the forest of that turtle. Your roof is doing the same thing. That’s your first line of defense for most weather ailments that we have. So you want to keep it in good shape.
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When it comes to we’ve talked about this in the past because we had some supply chain issues and so on. You know, last year, about a year ago or so, we had some issues we were still dealing with. Is all of that gone and done with? Are there still some issues along those lines?
SPEAKER 10 :
For the most part, it’s pretty well gone. So a couple couple things that we’re trying on when it gets into the higher end shingle, like even even higher than what you have on yours. It might take a little longer to get those, but for the most part, that’s gone. They really ramped up the beginning of this last season because they were worried that there was going to be more storms like we had in 2022, I think it was, 2023. And that didn’t happen, so they had a lot of overkills. We’re pretty well stocked up on stuff. Unfortunately, that didn’t affect the pricing of anything. So everything’s just still expensive. We still get four or five price increases on materials every season. But we have availability, which is half the battle. Perfect.
SPEAKER 07 :
Now, also, I will tell you guys listening that some of you are thinking, man, I not only have some roof stuff I need to get done, but I probably have some gutter things that are an issue, and I can see where I’ve got some icicles and some things that aren’t quite sealed up, and maybe I need a different downspout in an area. Dave, as you know, sometimes when homes are built, they don’t really consider all of those different things. And as time goes by, you may want to add an additional downspout in some areas, and those are things you can take care of as well. Absolutely.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, we can do the gutters. We’re doing siding. Like I said, we’re doing an entire house siding job right now up in Loveland. So there’s a lot of different things that we do that we can help out with for sure.
SPEAKER 07 :
Okay. All right. So again, guys, everybody listening, please just go to ready-radio.com. That’s a really easy way if you’re driving to actually go to any of my websites, you’ll find Dave. So it doesn’t even matter which one. It doesn’t really matter which website you go to. You’re going to find Dave there. You can do it that way. Or you can call Dave directly, 303-710-6916, 303-710-6916. Dave, also, when it comes to these annual inspections, does it matter what time of the year those things get done? I mean, a lot of people, I think, well, I’ll either do it spring or fall. But what’s wrong with right now?
SPEAKER 10 :
There’s nothing wrong with right now. Like I said, we’re doing three treatments tomorrow. On the treatment side, if we’re 40 degrees and some sunshine and the roof is dry, we’re working. You’re raring to go. Yeah, and same basic thing on replacements. We’ve got two scheduled for the week after Christmas. Nice. We can get those done. As long as it’s not freezing, we’re working.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, and for those of you looking kind of long-term, which you guys all know we look at that continually as a business, don’t really see anything on the horizon. I think you’re in pretty good shape right now as far as all that goes, Dave. So as I always say, get it while you can. Amen. Bring it on. Bring it on. So those of you listening, please, again, as you’re doing some things, even, for example, this was the other reminder I had, Dave, is folks will be, you know, they put lights up and they’ll be taking those down in the not too distant future. And you may notice some things when you’re doing that that maybe you didn’t notice putting them up where, hey, there’s a little loose shingle here. I’ve got a bad spot there. I’ve got this or I’ve got that. You know, don’t delay. Give Dave a call. He’ll work that into the schedule and get you all taken care of. And it’s as simple as that. Absolutely. It’s pretty simple, absolutely. Dave, as always, I appreciate you. Merry Christmas to you and your whole family. And I mean that sincerely. You’ve been a great partner of ours, and I cannot thank you enough.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, I sincerely appreciate the opportunity and being with you guys. And Merry Christmas to you and everybody listening. So it’s a good year.
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You’re the man, Dave. We appreciate you. I appreciate it. All right, man. Have a good one. Merry Christmas. And I mean that, guys. If you want a roofer to come out, and now that Dave’s gone, I’ll even say this more freely because I always feel like I’m embarrassing him at times. But honestly. Smartest roofer I’ve ever met can fix things that I’ve seen other guys attempt to fix and can’t, and that’s personal experience on my end on the commercial and the residential side. Dave just has that tenacity, knowledge, and the ability to get things taken care of that, frankly, you’re just not going to find from other roofers. I have no other way to say it other than that. I’m just being straight up honest. If you want the best roofer in the area, you want the ability to extend the life of your roof, repair your roof, save money when it’s all said and done, give Dave a call, 303-710-6916. All right, we’re going to come right back. And somebody sent me, Dan, I believe, how to prepare. For a home invasion. Now, we went from the roofing end, which, yes, you need to be prepared and have all that handled with insurance, et cetera. But the home invasion thing, especially now where, you know, it’s darker, longer during the day. Granted, we’re going to start gaining a little bit of daylight. But we’re in that time of the year to where you really have to be prepared when it comes to some of these things. And we’ll talk about that as soon as I come back. So don’t go anywhere. Ready Radio. It’s ready-radio.com is our website. KLZ 560.
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SPEAKER 07 :
All right, and we are back. Ready Radio, KLZ 560. Appreciate you all joining us. And let me get into the how to prepare for a home invasion. Practical tips and tricks. And again, these are some great videos that a great listener, Dan, sends to me on a routine basis. And I watch as many as I possibly can, trying to learn as much. And This particular topic, we’ve been through before, probably though more so on one of my other programs, not necessarily Ready Radio. I think I’ve done some of this that we’re going to go through. I’ve talked about a portion of this on Fix It Radio, but not in this particular way, I guess I should say. And I’m going to do my very best to get through this. We’ve got a little bit of, well, I got a lot of material to cover, but we’ll try to do the best we can. Get this in one part. Bottom line, when it comes to preventing and or handling a home invasion, hopefully you never have one. But you read almost daily, and I belong to a few neighborhood groups, Facebook groups and so on, where you see things happening all the time. People – there was one the other day I watched where somebody broke into the car, got the garage door opener out of the car, was able to open the garage, rummaged through the garage. Something must have scared them off because not much was taken from the garage. But at that point – You know, not everybody locks their garage door into the house at night. And at that point, you’re very vulnerable from having somebody actually walk in. And this person had no idea this was going on until the next morning. So these things happen. We don’t want them to, but they do. So part of what… we’re going to go through is how to not only prepare for that but if it does happen what do you do i’m going to focus more on the preparation end of it and if i have to i’ll break this up into two parts and then if you do encounter somebody that has entered what do you do so number one thing is you have to understand the threat and this one as i was watching this video and listening It gave me a few ideas that I hadn’t really thought of prior. A couple of points here. So this one, thieves plan things out. That one you kind of know. You know, thieves aren’t stupid. They want to know where are the dark spots in your home on the outside. where’s the most accessibility, front or back? There was a story here not long ago where a lot of high-end homes that backed up to open space and golf courses, they were literally targeting those particular homes coming down on a Friday night and cleaning them out, taking all the high-end stuff with them. They ended up with millions of dollars of stuff when it was all said and done. It was huge. So they do plan things out. They’re looking for those entry spots. Where is the easy access? Do you have an old broken down door, you know, even like a side garage door where when you look at it, you’re just like, yeah, that thing wouldn’t take much to, you know, crack open or even push through. They’re looking at those things. They’re eyeballing stuff. Trust me. And keep in mind that. Depending upon where you live, thieves can do everything from drive around in a car, which, by the way, can be somewhat suspicious because people will be looking at that probably more so than anything else. You can take a thief with a jogging suit and some earbuds, and they could be jogging around the neighborhood. And fact of the matter is, who would know the difference? Right. No one. And the way things are even today with technology, they could be videoing a lot of that as they’re jogging. Glasses, other devices, and so on, where you don’t even know that’s what they’re doing. It’s almost, well, it isn’t almost. It is hidden. Nobody even knows what’s going on. So they have the ability to check these things out. So they’re looking at everything from easy access, as again I said, dark spots, doors, things like that. They’re looking also for pets, motion sensors. Do you have a big dog? Are things they can look up and see? Are there motion sensors where in the dark and you move, the light’s going to come on? They’re always looking for we talk about this even on drive radio when it comes to how to keep your car from being stolen. Your house is not any different when it comes to being broken into. They’re looking for the path of least resistance. If your house is much easier to get into than the neighbor’s house, which one do you think they’re going to pick? If you don’t have a dog and the neighbor has a dog, which one do you think they’re going to pick? If you’ve got a lot of overgrown bushes up by some of your entry doors and the neighbor doesn’t, again, which one are they picking? Again, a lot of this is just common sense. And taking a walk around your house would really open your eyes and start looking at, okay, where do I have some areas that I probably ought to tighten up on? And again, every neighborhood, every situation is a little bit different. So point being… Small changes make a huge difference. And bottom line is make your home a harder target for thieves. So make your home a harder target for thieves in multiple ways, which we’re going to go through a few more of. This next one, this one was good. And we maybe do this, but maybe not intentionally. And I’ve done this, but I don’t know that I’ve ever done it intentionally. And that is walk your neighborhood. At different times, picking up on all of the details while you’re walking. Where can people hide in other people’s yards and homes and so on? Where are those dark properties at? In other words, some of this has to be done at night. You may need to take a walk through your neighborhood at night or early in the morning when it’s still dark out. When it’s all said and done, whose property looks the most inviting to a thief? Hopefully it’s not yours. Again, my point is, and the point of this particular video was, walking around the neighborhood that you currently live in and getting an idea of, you know, are there areas where a thief could hide and nobody would really know they’re there and they could even hang out there for a little bit until they know there’s no activity in a particular home and, boom, they can strike. Some of you may live next to open space. Some of you might live next to a park. You might live across the street from a park. By the way, those are areas where if it’s a park that’s got bushes and benches and things like that, those are things that thieves can get in and get behind and hide in and watch what they want to get into house-wise and come right from there to your home or another home that’s easy to get into. So bottom line, not only take a look at your own home as you’re walking around it, but take a look at the neighborhood. And where are there places that folks could hide, thieves could hide, nefarious individuals, and still you could be a target at the end of the day? And by the way, this is the front and the back. Not just the front. So those of you that have open space behind you or maybe a park behind you or some of you live on a golf course, things like that, really look at how easy and accessible is your backyard as well as the front yard. Some of you, that might be a side yard. Some of you have big walking paths that go up next to your house, your fence, whatever the case. Look at all of those things because that’s where you could become more of a target than the house next door to you. All right. There’s layers, by the way, which if you think about it, there’s layers of defenses that you need to have when it comes to defending your own property. First layer is, we just talked about it, the outer edges. As somebody’s coming up to your home, what do they see? Are there yard signs for an alarm? Are there stickers on the windows for an alarm? Again, is there a dog? Are there visible cameras? And by the way, this particular video had a good idea. Whether you have an active alarm or not, just having the sign up is still a deterrent because they don’t know if it’s active or not. And having a sign of, of course, a reputable company would make them think twice about, am I going to enter this home or the one next door that has no alarm? And believe it or not, we live in a day and age where you would think most people have alarms. Not everybody does. It’s still not 100%. So they’re also going to look at, as I said earlier, motion sensors. I talked about not neglecting your landscaping. These are the things that they’re looking at. We’re talking about the first layer. So, you know, do you have bushes right next to the front door that somebody could hide in and boom, pop out and go to work on the front door? This is a good one, and I’ve read this before but never talked about it much. You might want to even change some of your landscaping. For example, plant some really prickly rose bushes in front of the windows they might be able to access. That is a deterrent in and of itself. Nobody wants to have to pull those things out of their – and by the way, it’s a slowdown as well because you’re fighting with the bush trying to get done what you need to do. So that’s one thing. Plant some thorny bushes, rose bushes or whatever, right next to those entry windows. Reinforce – this is where Dave from Veteran Windows and Doors, not a sponsor today, but he is on my daily show, and he talks about this. I’ve interviewed him many times, making sure that your entry doors are reinforced, solid, and nobody can break in. And by the way, if you need a reference on that, Dave from Veteran Windows and Doors is somebody that can do all of that. Right now for December, he’s got a great special on those as well. So reinforcing those doors and windows. In some cases, this is where also Dave comes into play, you might want to put a storm door on. Storm door is just another added layer of protection from getting into the door behind it. And in some cases, the storm door can be just as strong or stronger than your front door. So look at that end of things and don’t forget, because I think a lot of people do, they’ll put a really nice front door on, really nice back door, have the ability to even lock it. They might have a patio door and they lock it. They do a really good job of all of that. But yet they forget about the old nasty garage door that goes from the garage to outside. By the way, once they get in the garage, they’ve either got access to all sorts of other different things, tools and so on. And the door to the kitchen typically is right there as well. So look at all those doors. Make sure that you’re all shored up. This is another one that I had never thought of, but it makes a lot of sense. Make coming up to your home noisy. So things like wind chimes they could bump into, bells on doors that open and close, crunchy gravel and things that they might have to walk up to as they come up to the front door. In other words, make it to where they can’t just sneak up unbeknownst to anybody, and voila, they’re at the front door. So some of you have sidewalks that go from the driveway all the way to the front door. What can you do to make that a little bit noisier so if somebody’s walking up, you know. There’s everything from driveway alarms that’ll chime on the inside and so on. Think outside the box, and how would you know outside of a doorbell camera and so on if somebody’s actually walking up to a front door, side door, back door? And some of the items that we’re talking about, by the way, are extremely inexpensive. They’re not near as expensive. All of this stuff, by the way, from alarms to cameras to you name it, that is one thing that inflation hasn’t hit. It’s actually gone the other way. Because like any other technology, the more people use it and the more that gets bought, the cheaper it becomes. So cameras today are way cheaper than they were even 10 years ago, five years ago. So in today’s world, by the way, there’s no excuse to not have even some minimalistic cameras on your property some way, somehow. the ring system that is sold through amazon is about as inexpensive as it gets and frankly works extremely well so just a side note so bottom line what’s your first layer how is all that working and as you approach your own house because what a lot of us do we’re all guilty of this especially if you park in your garage you open the garage door you roll on in you shut the garage door and you go into your house from your garage Most people never enter their house from the actual front door, back door, side door. Even folks that may not be able to park in the garage will typically pull up, open the garage door, head in, close the garage door. And I’ve seen it. I watch it. So that’s the prevalence. Most don’t go through that. front door. So that’s the outer layer. Let me do this. Let me take a quick break. We’ll come back. I’m going to cover the inner layer and some other things. I think I can get through all of these. I’ll do my very best to do that. And all of these, by the way, we put up on our website, ready-radio.com. We’ll be right back. Ready Radio, KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 02 :
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SPEAKER 07 :
All right, Ready Radio, KLZ 560, thanks for joining us today. Live program on December the 20th. We’ve gone through the outer end of things when it comes to protecting your home, making it more, you know, burglar-proof. The next one is the interior layer. So for a lot of you, you may think you have this really dialed in, but once again, just like the outside… Take a walk around the inside of the house purposely, not just casually, but purposely. Again, where were those entry points that were the easiest access? How are those all shored up? If somebody does get in, how do you know? Do you have a basic idea? alarm with a chime on it whereby if a door is open the chime goes off and those can get very annoying at times but they can be turned on and off you can turn them off at not you know turn them off during the day turn them on at night that kind of a thing super easy also do you have on your alarm glass break alarm some of you have huge picture windows that would be very easy for somebody to break and just march on in do you have a glass break alarm on that this one was interesting I don’t know too many people that have these, but some of you may, and you may be able to make one of these depending upon the configuration of your house, but do you have a safe room? One of those rooms where if you lock everything up solid, it’s really difficult to get in. Could you turn a basement, furnace room, something along those lines, into that? Putting on heavier door jam and so on, heavier door, could you make it that safe? locking it from the inside, of course, with a lock that is not penetrable. Look through that and see what works best in case somebody does get in. In other words, you’re not home, and the kids are, and they’re by themselves. Do they know where to go? We’ll talk about that here in a moment as well. But on that safe room end of things, is it stocked with some supplies? Let’s say you had to go in there and hang out for a little while. Do you have the ability to do so? This was really key, which I hadn’t thought about either. Where’s the choke points in your house? In other words, if you’re trying to get out and they’re trying to get in, where’s those narrow spots in your house that become a choke point that would enable somebody to keep you in that particular area and you’re not able to escape? Where are those? And can you change things around to get rid of them? This one’s key as well. And I know a lot of parents that this is big on, but sometimes just the way the houses are configured, you don’t have a choice. Are all the bedrooms on one level or do you have some bedrooms up, some bedrooms down? In some cases, you may have bedrooms in the basement, bedrooms on the main floor, bedrooms upstairs. Where is everybody? And if something were to happen, how is that going to work? Have you thought through and walked through that? A quick tip, which they gave, which is spot on, and some of us that are older don’t think about these things, but baby monitors are great for picking up things, especially sound. And they’re very sensitive because you want to hear if your baby’s got something going on. These baby alarms or monitors, I could usually call them, are not that expensive, by the way, and very easy to use in this particular situation. The bottom line here is if somebody gets inside, how are you buying time? And some houses are big, some houses are small. If they do get in, how is that going to work? Now, I’ve read, again, going back to the very first segment, talking about some of the news stories you read and so on where there’s home invasion break-ins and so on. There are times where I believe that the thieves didn’t think anybody was home. But there was. And now you run into a situation where, oh, boy, we’re caught. So now what? Some will get scared and just leave. Some won’t. You take somebody that maybe has already been caught. Maybe they’ve already had some charges pressed against them. They may have even done some time, that sort of a thing. Maybe they’re on probation right now. They don’t want to be caught, and they may do things to not be caught. So, again, you need to buy time for these situations. This is one we talk about quite often. A lot of you have this, but not everybody does. Do you have self-defense items, guns, et cetera? And if you do, do you know how to use them and do the people in your home know how to use them? And do you have only one, or do you have more than one? Where are they stored? Are they easy accessible? For example, are all of your weapons stored back in the back part of the house where you sleep, or do you have them in other places? What if somebody just happened to come in the front door, which has happened? You can use an exact example of something I’ve read not that long ago. What if it’s 5 o’clock at night and somebody walks in? which has happened here in the metro area. Now what? Do you have the ability at that point to fend off would-be intruder when you may be in the living room or your family room and all of what I just mentioned defense-wise is in the bedroom, which might be quite a ways away. So think through some of this. If somebody were to enter in, how are you going to defend yourself? Pepper spray, we’ve talked about this here in some of the recent episodes. Pepper spray works extremely well. In some cases, it may work as well as a gun, depending upon who you’re trying to fend off, and the reason being is it’s simple to use. Anybody can use pepper spray. Teach them how to point, shoot, and you’re done. So once again, though, in any of these items… You must know how to use them and then be proficient at that. And I said this earlier, but also where do you keep your tools? Because, again, where your tools are, those could be used by you in a situation to defend yourself or could be used by the perpetrator as well. So where do you keep those sorts of things and how accessible are those? And again, this goes back to just the whole configuration, you know, floor plan of your home and how they potentially could get in. And the one thing, too, that didn’t talk about in the last, the outer layer, which we’ve talked about many times on Fix-It Radio, and that is your garage door, your automatic garage door. In most cases. I saw a guy the other day that got a call out, locksmith got a call out to open someone’s house. They had locked the keys in or didn’t have the keys with them. And so rather than worrying about, you know, picking the front door lock and so on and so forth, this guy gets out a long wire, takes a little wedge. pushes that up in between the garage door and the sill, sticks his phone up in there, which now he has a camera he can see inside, sticks his wire in, grabs the tether to the door to release it, and boom, he’s in in no more than about 30 seconds. That, by the way, is your biggest weak link in your whole defense end of things, and I’m not exaggerating. That single garage, double garage door is one of the easiest things for folks to get into your house with, and most of us don’t think anything about it. You just hit the button, come and go. So that’s one of those things to really… think through is when it comes to all of this protection stuff, where are these access points? And remember, the garage is going to be one of those that becomes very, very easy for them to get into. John, you’re up. Go ahead, sir.
SPEAKER 08 :
Hey, you were talking about pepper spray. I like bear spray better because it shoots further.
SPEAKER 07 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 08 :
And it’s a little more powerful than what you can buy. And if you go on Amazon, they sell inert cans of bear spray without the pepper in it, or… that you can use for practicing. Oh, nice. And they recommend that even, you know, we’re talking home invasion, but if you’re ever going to use bear spray, you should know how to use it. And buying a couple of cans of these and just taking it out and practicing one time would probably be worth it. Great idea. The other thing with that is, and we’re talking about, if you have a can of that in the door of your car, And you need to use it. Yeah. But if you get pulled over for another reason, I’m a hiker. It’s just my bear spray.
SPEAKER 07 :
I do a lot of outdoor activities, and I have it here on purpose. Okay, fine. Great. By the way, there’s nothing illegal about that.
SPEAKER 08 :
No. But, you know, there’s a lot of people out there, unfortunately, that, you know, don’t know how to use certain things. And, you know, I see it on the trail or anywhere else. They got their bear spray in a pouch on the back of their pack.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, that’s not going to work.
SPEAKER 08 :
It ain’t going to do you any good if you’re hiking down the trail. I know I keep mine either on my belt or in a shoulder pouch. Stop, bear. Stop, bear. Yeah. You know what? There’s a great video out there of a grizzly bear charging a mirror because it thought it was somebody else. Somebody set up a mirror and some bait. You want to get the crap scared out of you. Watch that.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, John, as you know, and I’ve seen them, they can move a lot faster than you would think. Most people think, oh, they’re slow, I can outrun one. Yeah, no, you can’t. As long as you can outrun the guy next to you, you’ll be okay. But, yeah, you’re not outrunning the bear.
SPEAKER 08 :
Yep. And so the other thing, when you were talking about home improvement, a big dog, like I have a livestock guardian dog, will let you know somebody’s coming up to the house.
SPEAKER 07 :
Absolutely.
SPEAKER 08 :
And then, you know, then you don’t have to worry about them invading because, you know, they’re coming. And then the only thing you need if they do is a shovel. Yep. Absolutely. Because, you know, where I’m at, it’d be easier to dump the body than to call the cops and go through all the paperwork. Absolutely.
SPEAKER 07 :
Absolutely. John, you have a good day. You too, man. Appreciate you, John, very much. Scott Whatley just said, make sure you always have the wind right with the bear spray. Yeah, you don’t want it coming back on you. So, yeah, Scott, thank you for that. Appreciate it. Dave, you’re next. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, just to expand on what you were talking about, John, some of the things that I used to teach was telling women specifically, but this would apply to anyone, think outside the box. Anything can be a weapon. Anything. If you’re sitting there in your living room, and you’re doing a crossword puzzle and somebody breaks in the front door, that pen or that pencil that you have in your hand doing the crossword, now it’s a weapon. Now you’re defending yourself. A lamp, you know, anything that you’d see, a heavy ashtray, whatever.
SPEAKER 07 :
Great point.
SPEAKER 09 :
Anything would be a weapon.
SPEAKER 07 :
People have little, you know, statue figurines and things like that. Dave, anything you could grab could be used.
SPEAKER 09 :
And all you even want to do is even just buy yourself some time. You throw a distraction at that person, whoever they are, they’re momentarily blinded or they’re moving out of the way, they’re off balance, and that gives you time to create distance and get to your tools to go to work.
SPEAKER 07 :
Dave, it could be something as simple as a heavy picture hanging on the wall that you grab and toss at them.
SPEAKER 09 :
Absolutely.
SPEAKER 07 :
Anything to slow them down.
SPEAKER 09 :
Absolutely. Yeah, anything could be used to bludgeon them. Or, hell, even just standing up and screaming like a banshee.
SPEAKER 07 :
Right.
SPEAKER 09 :
Now all of a sudden they realize that this is a house of a lunatic.
SPEAKER 07 :
I don’t think I want to… Yeah, I’m going to… It goes back to the first things I talked about, Dave. They want easy, and if all of a sudden it doesn’t seem so easy, they’re going somewhere else.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah. And, you know, another thing is, like you’re talking about, not making yourself a target or your home a target. Simple thing of putting on… Your porch light.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER 09 :
If the front of your house is lit up with porch lights and they make them so cheap anymore, those solar security lights, you know, you could put four or five of them up. $10 a piece when they’re on sale.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, Dave, to your point, boy, with the LEDs and the advancements we’ve made along those lines, it really is to a point now where, honestly, there’s really not any excuse for a homeowner to not have all of this dialed in the way things have become because it’s not near as expensive as it used to be to handle this stuff.
SPEAKER 09 :
No. But just one thing I wanted to point out to people, because it’s one thing that people always think of, I need to have a weapon or I need to be licensed for it. No. Anything… within hand’s reach that you can wield can become a weapon.
SPEAKER 07 :
Dave, a baseball bat close to the front door would work.
SPEAKER 09 :
Yeah, or you’re in the kitchen cooking dinner, and boy, that pan spray that you use to spray it right there in the face with that. That or a frying pan.
SPEAKER 07 :
I mean, Dave, again, to your point, there’s all sorts of things we have usually at our disposal. We just don’t think about it.
SPEAKER 09 :
Absolutely. But it’s just something simple like that.
SPEAKER 07 :
No, that’s great. I appreciate that, Dave. Thank you very much. And, yeah, Scott Watley, I was laughing a moment ago at the pepper spray, bear spray, but he’s correct. Yeah, which way is the wind blowing? Make sure that you’ve got all that taken care of and handled because, yeah, the last thing you want is some of that coming back at you. And it goes back to John’s point a moment ago as well. practice with these things and make sure that you’re able to use them. So, again, anything you can do when it comes to that interior layer, having the defense items like Dave just mentioned a moment ago, and we’ve had several people chime in on this, don’t forget as well, you may not feel like a gun is for you. And I get it. They’re not for everyone. Some can do very well with them. I think everybody can, by the way, with some training, but I get it. Not everybody wants to do that. So look at things like we talked about, the bear spray, pepper spray. Also stun guns, tasers. Those are readily available. They’re not cheap to get a good one, but same situation. They can be used not only to slow somebody down, but potentially knock somebody down. Now, I will say this, and you’ve seen video of this. If somebody comes in the front door and they are amped up on meth and they are way out there and they’re just totally drug-ridden and they’re a fair-sized individual, frankly, you need a good taser to take them down. An average taser may not do it. So you’ve got to do some research on that, and maybe that’s something at a later show in 2025 I could get into and talk about the different tasers that are out there. I am not a taser expert. I’m a gun expert, not a taser expert. So I don’t do much along those lines at all. So I’ll do a little bit of research on that and see what there is available and so on because I’ve watched plenty of videos where somebody that’s all hyped up police etc you know use that device on that particular individual and it doesn’t do a whole lot so just something to think about but you have to do whatever works best for you and again bottom line know how to use all of those things Practice with those things. And once again, when it comes to just your home in general, as Dave said a moment ago, don’t be that target. One thing, too, that I’ll talk about, I’m going to kind of break this up. We’ll do this again in our next live episode. And that is changing your patterns. Some people come home the exact same way, the exact same time every single day. Change your patterns. Can somebody follow you and know where you’re going or do you change it up to where they wouldn’t know? Even how you enter your home and what you do and some of those things, change it up. Don’t get in the habit of just doing the same thing day after day after day because unfortunately when we do, we become a lot more comfortable and lackadaisical when we do that. And again, bottom line, we want everybody to be safe. And I don’t want to scare anybody or make anybody think, especially during this holiday first of the year season, you don’t want anybody to think that this is going to happen to you tomorrow, but we want to make sure it doesn’t. And you read about these things all of the time. There was a situation that happened yesterday in Arvada at a big old tire store where the employee shot the manager several times. They got in a big argument. Folks, we live in a day and age where you just don’t know what’s going to happen next. And By the way, I don’t ever want to be an owner of a business where that happens. I don’t think I want to read that in the news. But, yes, that, in fact, did happen. And, you know, what were all the circumstances leading up and so on, I don’t know. But my point is there’s just people out there that have a screw loose. Sorry, but they do. This particular individual that shot the manager, you don’t do those things when you’re sane, folks. That’s not normal behavior. Unfortunately, and we talk about this a lot during The Daily Show. We are surrounded by a lot of individuals that just aren’t normal. I’m sorry to say, but they’re not. They do have a screw loose. And we have to be as protective as we possibly can to make sure that we are able to defend ourselves at all times, at all costs. And I think one thing, too, and this is something I was going to go through, and I’ll do it on the next episode of this continuation of, is does all of our family know what to do? You know, back to Dave’s point a moment ago, does your family know about all those things that are in the kitchen that potentially could be used? Do they know what to do in a particular crisis situation? If we don’t talk to our kids and our families and so on, they’re not going to know. And we don’t tell them so that they can get all freaked out about somebody coming in. No, we educate them so that the more they know, the safer that they are. It’s why we do that. It’s why you teach your kids how to drive properly. We want them to be safe once they start driving. But yet we don’t go through these basic things inside the home. and we should be. So I’ll do the second half of this because there’s some things along those lines I can get into, and I’ll even do a little research on the Taser end of things as well. And in the meantime, guys, please have a very happy holiday. Merry Christmas. We appreciate each and every one of you. Don’t forget to go to the website, ready-radio.com, and if you’re listening to a replay episode, thank you very much for doing that as well. Again, this has been Ready Radio, KLZ 560.
