How to make sure criminals do not get through your electric fence!

How to make sure criminals do not get through your electric fence!

How to strengthen your electric fence and security

Electric fence experts Gido Electric Fencing, Impact Fencing Installations, and Fortis Pro Active Defence Solutions provided guidelines on how to strengthen electric fence security.

• Make sure that that the electric fence bracket is at least an eight-strand square tubing. Many installers are reporting that 5, 6, 7, and 8-string flat and round bar fences are easily breached.
• The electrification wire should be as conductive as possible, because highly-conductive wires with little resistance deliver the right kind of energy needed to run a good electric fence.
• Make sure your fence is switched on, and is working. Criminals have innovative methods to test if an electric fence is working, and will strike if it is out.
• Make sure the fence is correctly installed, without any loose wires. Criminals often lift the bottom two strands of fences fitted to 1.8-metre walls to slip through.
• Use a strong wall to keep criminals out. People often install an electric fence on top of a precast wall, which makes it easy for criminals to break a bottom slab and crawl through.
• Install extra batteries to protect against load shedding or electricity outages. Extra batteries can buy you extra time should the power go off.
• Do not switch off the fence when the alarm goes off repeatedly. Some criminals create a short in the fence, hoping it will malfunction or that the owner will switch it off because of the irritation of the alarm.

How to further improve your home security

Riaan Coetzee from Fortis Pro Active Defence Solutions advised people to not only rely on an electric fence, but to use multiple layers of security to keep criminals out.

“The fact is that there is no fence that is criminal-proof. Given sufficient time, odds are he will figure out a way to scale it,” said Coetzee.

“Always think layered defence. The more layers you can add, and the stronger you can make each layer, the better.”

“So instead of having only an electric fence, and then burglar bars, consider adding another layer between them – maybe alarm beams, or cameras. Or both if you can. The more difficult you can make it, the better.”