Even with the recent upturn in the economy, some people still have it quite hard out there. In fact, there has been a spike in the number of central air conditioners that have been stolen due to rising scrap metal prices.
Of course, your central air conditioner isn’t the only metal that thieves are stealing. There have been cases of cars being stripped of parts, and even manhole covers being lifted out of the street for the metal content. So this begs the question, what’s a homeowner to do?
You need to protect yourself from potential thieves. The good news is that there are a few things that you can do to prevent yourself from having to spend several thousands of dollars to keep your home’s temperature conditioned:
-Hiding your unit with some shrubbery is the most obvious way to tackle this issue. The idea here, is that if the thieves can’t see your unit, they can’t steal it and will move on to the next house.
-Adding a motion sensor light can make thieves feel wary about stealing your unit. After all, it is a lot harder to steal something during the day because everyone can see what’s going on. A bright light is an awesome way of keeping your unit safe.
-One low tech option that is still effective is to have a guard dog. Guard dogs are a great at preventing a break in by being able to sound off their built in alarms that are sure to scare away any possible intruders.
-Boxing the unit in with a cage may be more expensive than the other tips, but could prove to be the most effective way to protect your unit. You can usually find items like this at your local HVAC supply house or maybe even a hardware store. Any potential thieves could see the cage, and not want to take the extra steps to get the copper and aluminum out.
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copper-theft-infographic Image Courtesy of Super Circuits
These tips are costly. However, the last thing you want is to have your unit stolen. So it may be a better idea to be proactive now, instead of reactive later on down the road. Do you have any ideas or suggestions on how to protect a central air conditioner system? Share your thoughts in comments section below.