Looking for ideas on securing your rural property

[stumpfield]

I'm sure many of us are in the same boat. ...live in the city with rural property hundreds of miles away. We try to go over there every opportunity we got but never often enough. Still many years away from being able to live there fulltime. Meanwhile, we try to build and get a head start in preparing for rural living.

How do you secure your personal perperty in rural areas? Any idea on how to reduce visibility and minimize the chance of someone breaking-in and walk away with your stuff? vandalism, squatters,...etc. This is remote property without any neighbor within miles. Thanks in advance.

 

[gordon21]

Steel cargo container with decent locks. I leave the pallett forks and box blade about 175' away chained and locked to some trees. The tractor, FEL, chainsaw, tools, etc stay in the cargo container. My stuff is still 800 miles away until I get moved next month.

 

[George2615]

Not much more you can do other than what's been mentioned. lockable cargo box, chains etc. The problem is if it can be seen from the road and someone sees that no one is around on a regular basis some may be tempted to steal.
Two weekends ago a friend told me of a similar situation.
A guy bought a piece of property (20 miles North of me) to build his retirement home. First he built a large pole barn to store his tools and equipment. Once he started clearing the house plot and digging out for the basement with his Massey w/ BH he decided to lock his equipment in the pole barn rather than transport everything back and forth every weekend (50 miles each way) All was fine for a couple weeks then he went up 2 week ago and found his pole barn door had been smashed inward, his TLB and all his tools were gone. He notified the police of this major theft. They took the report but said recovery chances are low. To top it off his own homeowner insurance won't cover his losses because even though he owns that property it is not his residence (yet) and only covered if stolen from his place of residence for which the policy was issued. He had not obtained any insurance on the new property with the pole barn yet since he was waiting to complete the basement to the builders specs to build the house on. He has all of us keeping our eyes open.
I believe the best info I can offer is to immediately get insurance on any structures on your new property and any equipment to cover any losses should something be damaged or stolen. Thieves can be brazen and bold and take a lack of movement on the property an invitation to steal.

 

[kossetx]

I'm concidering getting lojack on my new tractor. It won't stop the theft, but maybe it will get the crooks busted.

 

[Phils]

Since insurance is state-specific, and I suspect your neighbor probably pursued it to the limit, this probably doesn't apply but....

In most states a homeowner's policy has coverage for "personal property" and also "personal property at a 2nd or another location". Here (CA) most policies include 10% for property at another location. If you have 150,000 coverage for personal property at your home you could use up to 15,000 for property at another location. That limit can be raised for additional premium, but 10% is what's included with no additional cost. It covers stuff stolen from your car when it is parked at the airport, or taken from your hotel room while you are on vacation, or burned in a fire at your mother's house 'cause you had it there until you brought it to your house, or stolen from your barn at your distant property.

Since he apparently tried filing a claim with his insurance company this appears to not be the case in NY but it surprises me as I actually thought it was pretty standard across the country.

We DO have "basic" policies available that don't automatically include that feature (and other features, like liability), more like an "ala carte" thing where you buy each individual coverage rather than the normal "package" policy. Anybody that contacts me only gets a package policy (unless there are other problems disqualifying them from the preferred companies and package policies). A package policy is less expensive than a basic policy with all the other necessary coverages added.

And as far as the lockable shipping containers go, our archery club has had them broken into twice over the last few years. We finally modified them with a solid bar across the back, slid into slots on each side with the lock totally surrounded by a steel box except at the bottom where there's room to get a hand and key in. So far, so good. You'd have to have an oxy-acetylene torch to get in now, but we realize that someone may try that next.

Phil

 

[Phils]

kossetx,

If you get Lo Jack make sure the surrounding towns have the tracking equipment. Our town doesn't. A patrol car from a town 30 miles away was in town picking up a bad guy and got a Lo Jack signal from a stolen backhoe. It'd been here awhile but nothing happens if there's no receiver to hear it calling home.

I've seen at least one system that uses satellite GPS tracking for theft recovery. I'd be more inclined to use something like that myself. The one I looked at included a feature where you could look on the internet to see where the equipment was located (I thought I bookmarked it but can't find it now -- PM me if you want the site as I can call the guy that first showed it to me).

Phil

 

[Richard]

Years ago, where I now live, use to be my father in laws working farm (cows). He lived about 10 miles away. He also had a tenant on the farm (about 1,200 acres then).

He is FULL of stories today how even though there was a tenant out here, even though HE was out here near every weekend, he had this & that stolen.

His son had an old mustang parked in the garage that he was restoring. Evidently they went to work on car one day and found many pieces of it missing. Ticked off, they did what ever they did (story kind of fades after 30 years). Seems they came back to barn to work on it again a couple weeks later and most of the REST of the car was now gone.

Trespassers... one of his daughters came out with her boyfriend to have a picnic at the cabin ( /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif) as they walked up to her familys cabin on her family's farm, some strangers walked out and gruffly asked HER "what the heck she wanted"

Oh, and it seems someone else at one time was trying to start (or did?) a ..."cash crop" that is usually frowned upon by the drug enforcement types.

Amazes me how brazen & idiotic some people can be.

 

[ToadHill]

I have good neighbours who keep an eye on my equipment. They have a key to my barn and are welcome to borrow what they need. It's always been returned clean and in good shape. They make sure no one else bothers the barn, and call anytime something looks amiss.

 

[MtnViewRanch]

Have 2 of the local sheriffs' for neighbors, /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif and pretty much everybody knows it. 6 years with no problems yet. We have to be in 1 of the few areas left where you can step out your door and shoot a gun and nobody thinks anything about it. /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif

Brian

 

[MtnViewRanch]

You need to be careful about collecting on your insurance. It often raises your rates so that you end up paying for the check they give you yourself with the rate increases that are imposed. /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif Then when you go shopping for a new carrier because your rates went up, low & behold nobody else wants to carry you because you have had a claim in the last 3 years. So you get stuck with your current insurance provider, paying for your own claim. /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif( victim of the Pines Fire )

By the way, I had asked my broker if it was going to be a problem to make this claim (cost me money) no problem he says. HA, that's all that it has cost me. Lesson learned though, /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif only use insurance for catastrophes, and my insurance broker that I thought was my friend, wasn't. /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

Brian