This week we hear from our property management company, Case, Huff & De Rito Retail about property damages.
PRECIOUS METALBASICS OF THEFT PREVENTION
Whether in good times or bad, from an economic standpoint, there always seems to be a steady flow of property damage and theft. Especially in this period of slow economic recovery, there is great need to be prepared.
Some of your most valuable and most vulnerable exposed assets are roof mounted A/C units. Many property owners are turning to rooftop motion detectors and security beams to monitor for after-hours activity on the roofs. Tripping the systems set off lights and sirens and they are monitored by security companies which can then dispatch the police as they would with any other burglar alarm. This type of measure can be a very affordable addition to any existing building security by using wireless motion sensors like the one shown at right. A similar system can be employed for ground level units as well.
Don’t think it won’t happen to your property in your neighborhood. A thief with even limited experience can easily cause a great deal of damage and create a financial disaster in a very short period of time. The photo at the left is one of four 7 ½ ton HVAC units that had outside coils cut out and stolen for the copper tubing that they contained. This was a $27,000.00 insurance claim. Posted security signs can deter attempted theft to some degree, but it’s not worth the loss if your “bluff” is called.
Brass is also fetching a good price at scrap yards these days, motivating criminals to prey upon a variety of openly exposed water systems that often utilize solid brass backflow preventers. Though relatively small in size, you could be unpleasantly surprised by the magnitude of their replacement cost. A device like the ones shown at right could range from $200 to $800 dollars by itself, not to mention any other damage caused to the connecting piping and water system, which will add the cost of additional replacement parts and the hourly rate of a professional plumber.
These devices are now being put into locked cages (another expense of several hundred dollars) but property managers are also wise to paint them with a bright color, as this decreases their scrap value, but not their functional value. Backflow preventers are costly items, prized by many petty thieves in Arizona. Some measures used to protect these devices include the construction and installation of steel cages and coating them in brightly colored paint to reduce the item’s scrap metal value without affecting their functionality. The cost of both these measures combined is far less expensive than their potential $1,000 to $1,500 replacement cost.
