Rear Security Bars on 2nd Floor

access to their yard also has access to your back yard, and thus your windows just a bit higher. This matters. Also, if you have the typical old decaying wood roof hatch with a simple clasp, have your building invest in a new steel metal spring-loaded hatch (a roofing company will install one for you) that is harder to pry open from the outside than the old flat ones that aren’t metal.

Whether you take the bars off really comes down to your risk tolerance, and what you’d rather deal with. Some people don’t want to think they live in a building that could be broken into, so they pretend it isn’t possible. Others don’t want to be broken into when they are home, but don’t care so much about break-ins when they aren’t (they problem is that theives sometimes make mistakes about whether any occupants are home.) Some will set alarms only some of the time. I preferred a window gate in my bedroom on the fire escape, rather than to have to worry constantly about setting and turning off an alarm. I usually kept the window blind closed in there anyway. If it was my living room, I might have felt differently, and looked into alarms.

This film idea sounds promising. Good luck.

While second floor bars on the front indicate a fear that the neighborhood is subject to a lot of break-ins (or the assumption that there are enough eyes on the street to notice a front window break-in, as they are still fairly easy to access by climbing on top the the trim around brownstone stoops and/or front doors), I think back of the building safety is an entirely different matter. Break-ins in back can be fairly invisible. If you read the crime reports in the local papers you can pick up in Park Slope, you see that there are a lot of entry through windows. I’m guessing, even when they don’t say, that a number of these are back windows, at whatever floor level (many are accessed through fire escapes.)

When I lived in a 4-unit coop, whoever had my unit before me when the windows were replaced put back the interior fire-dept. approved window gate back on the back window that was on the fire escape. I was glad it was there. I would have added a gate if it wasn’t. Either that, or I would have had to decide to put in an alarm, as you are deciding. (Some of my coop neighbors felt very differently about bars. But they hadn’t lived through multiple break-ins as I and many friends had, yes, in north park slope, as they hadn’t lived there before.) Rear fire escape windows without bars are break-ins waiting to happen, I think. You don’t mention whether there is a fire escape on the back of your building – it matters, as it makes break-ins much easier. Without a fire escape, I’d be tempted to go without bars and use an alarm, too. With a fire escape there, I’m not so certain I wouldn’t put a gate on that one, alarms on the others.

The other issue about taking bars down is opening windows for air (in the months in which the temperature is such that you can.) I don’t like sleeping with my windows on the fire escape open. (I’m not sure how I’d feel on a parlor floor without a fire escape, as I’ve never lived on the parlor floor.) If you read the local papers, you also see that a lot of people find people entering their apartments through open windows while they are sleeping. So you are right to want an alarm. This would probably awaken you and/or hopefully scare away someone who tried to enter through an open window while you were sleeping. The advantage of an interior gate (or well-installed exterior bars) in this situation is that you can leave a window open for air, and be certain that no one will be breaking in – you won’t be awoken by an alarm OR an intruder. You can also feel comfortable leaving windows open during the day when you are in another room, or even when out for short periods of time. For these reasons, I think I prefer to have a gate on fire-escape windows.

Whatever alarm system you use, make sure you can open your window only so far, and that an alarm will go if someone tries to open it far enough to gain entry. Of course, for this to work, you have to have the alarm on when you are home, and many people do not, which kind of defeats the purpose.

What I’m not certain about is how well an alarm protects you when there is no one in your apartment (I’m assuming the windows are closed and locked when you are out.) We’ve all heard alarms going off when we’ve walked around the neighborhood, sometimes on houses, and no one seems to be doing anything about them. How fast is response time? How fast do the police actually get there when called, and how well do they check out the back of the building if there is no one home in your building to let them in? Even if there is someone home, do they have keys to your apartment, and can they find them quickly? Do you want them breaking in to your building or apartment, when it isn’t even clear there’s been an entry? Is there common access to the back yard for them to get out there and see what’s going on?

If your building has attached buildings on each side, and no one is home in your building, they can’t really see the back of your home unless they get into an adjacent home on the side – do they do this? Why do I tend to doubt it? Probably because I think theft of property from homes is not all that high on the list of an urban police force with other worse things to occupy it – it might be different in a sleepy suburb. My sense is that this sort of property crime is not considered that big a deal in NY. You might get some useful information on what occurs in your sort of attached building when police are called by an alarm company by asking your local police precinct. (Do they even have alarms that call the police in NY?)

The reason someone above asked whether the rest had bars is that if another apartment in your building (or your common hall hatch, if you have one) is broken into, then the only bar to access is your front door. Is your front door and front door trim strong? You may need to strengthen that, or beef up the lock situation (in any event, even if you leave your bars.) In a rental on a block with lots of drug sales, in north park slope, we were once awaken by people who ran across the roofs, pried up the hatch in our hall, and ran down our stairs and out the door, pursued by another group. That was scary. So you need to figure out what goes on in buidings all up and down your block, as that anyone with

I was one of many of my neighbors who hack-sawed off our window bars in the late 1990’s. None of us have had a problem with security since. However, some sealed the holes left in the brick immediately, and others let it wait. Water getting into the holes froze in the winter and the bricks started falling apart. Just be cautious about damage to your house or window, both in taking out the bars, as well as in the future.

I installed the film on all of our front parlor level windows (garden floor has bars). It takes a week or two to fully bond. After that, it is completely invisible.