Home Defense Design/Architecture

[perdurabo93]

I am going to begin building a new custom house in rural central Texas sometime in the next year or so and since I have the opportunity to design my own home I want to do it right the first time. Besides all the considerations for energy efficiency and passive solar heating/cooling, I want to design my home with enhanced home defense in mind. I've done various searches on the net to find information on this, but have generally turned up very little. I would love to get my hands on the plans for Jeff Cooper's home, "The Sconce", but as to be expected there are no published plans for it.

What are some of the things I can do in terms of room layout, door positions, etc to make my home easier to defend/secure from the inside AND the outside? Besides wanting to make it easier to defend against intruders already inside my home, I also want ways to make the house easier to defend against those OUTSIDE my home who perhaps might decide to take shots at me while Im inside the house (think Ruby Ridge Massacre).

What are some of things I can do that aren't TOO very radical to improve my homes defensibility from a design standpoint (I would love to have a home with a 360 degree turret like Ed Brown's but alas I am not going to be able to afford something like that). Are there any published house plans/designs out there I can look at to get ideas? This will likely be a ~2000 square ft single story home with no basement (this is Texas, there ain't no such things as basements here).

 

[ZeSpectre]

Look at castle fortifications
Tall, narrow windows, that sort of thing.

 

[acousticmood]

Check this out - that is exactly what this is for www.cpted.net/

Good luck,

Or this one. http://www.cpted-watch.com/

 

[ravencon]

http://www.joelskousen.com/Secure/secure.html

This fellow sells a book called The Secure Home. I have no idea if it is worthwhile. It seems to cover security and self-sufficiency.

 

[Exmasonite]

i would keep a few things in mind:

1) No cover close to the house (bushes, trees) unless they have lots of sharp, pointy parts
2) Very good motion sensitive lights/cameras. Keep design/camera placement in mind for good fields of view. those video door bells/announcers couldn't hurt either.
3) I'd try to configure so that all the bedrooms are on second floor and such that if you're firing from cover in room/in bed, you're not on line with the next bedroom. in my last house, that was my concern given a central hallway: if i were to fire at my doorway from my bed, the next bedroom was just beyond such that I could hit my roommate. have an easily defendable upstairs landing so that you have the "high ground".
4) if you're set back from road/have a long drive, put up a motion sensor so you know if somebody pulls down your drive.

 

[ZeSpectre]

One simple item, a motion sensor on any stairs going up to the bedrooms. I also know a guy who built a spotlight aimed down his stairs that could be triggered from his bedroom for the dual purpose of lighting up his entire downstairs so he could see, and hopefully to blind any person trying to sneak around the house.

 

[CWL]

I'm of a mind that you don't need to design a bunker to live in, however, you may want to harden certain rooms such as master bedroom & childrens' rooms to prevent intrusion as well as bullet penetration. Also safe room for weapons storage.

 

[KBintheSLC]

I would like to fortify several key wall sections with plate steel. Hiding behind a wall for cover (Hollywood) doesn't work in real life. I would insert the plates under some major windows, and on some corners. This way you have adequate cover in the event of a force on force invasion. Aside from that, steel doors, and thick plexi-glass windows on the ground level are a good start to thwart a forced entry.

 

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

There's always the "Louisiana yard dog" option:

They also do double-duty as salesman/girl scout/Jahovah's Witness repellant. And they leave no unsightly mess to clean up afterward.

 

[Corndogg]

watch the movie "Panic Room"

 

[glockman19]

Simply filling the walls with sand will not only make your walls interior & exterior bullet proff it will also help insulate your home and save you thousands on heating & cooling.

In another thread, there were teses done with sand and bullets rarely penetrated through two sided drywall and 5 inches of sand.

 

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

there were teses done with sand and bullets rarely penetrated through two sided drywall and 5 inches of sand

Wouldn't the weight of the sand tend to bulge (and perhaps even push loose from the studs) the drywall as you get close to the floor?

 

[KBintheSLC]

One more thing... just locking your doors and windows will exponentially reduce the chances of you being caught off guard. Make the intruder "break" in, not "waltz" in through an open window/door.

 

[acousticmood]

Wouldn't the weight of the sand tend to bulge (and perhaps even push loose from the studs) the drywall as you get close to the floor?

yes - and you also have to be carefull to seal all the electrical boxes etc. Oh and don't use to big a nail to hang that picture!

What about streching Kevlar between the studs and the drywall?

 

[FerFAL]

Speaking as someone who’s about to finish 6 long years of Architecture career, I would suggest you to get professional help.
Honest advice here, and I guarantee you, it is one that will save you lots of headaches and wasted money: Find an architect that is willing to listen, not someone that will try to lure you into what HE wants. You simply wont design a house all of a sudden and do it right. Not the first 40 times, certainly not the 1 in your life.
What you are saying is almost like saying “ I have this lump here in my armpit, how can I remove it and see if its cancer or not?”
Designing a house is enough of a challenge, though you could look over some other plans and decide what you like, making only (very) minor modifications. Making a place that is also energy efficient AND safety designed? If you manage that without even having any design experience we’ll get you a plane ticket and a hotel room and ask you to give some lecture here at our University.

FerFAL

 

[Bubbles]

I've read Joel Skousen's Secure Home. Excellent material. I've also done research into passive solar design since the house I want to build will be in a fairly cold, mountainous area (I already own the land) and winter heating is a bigger priority than summer cooling.

Having said that, many of Skousen's ideas are incompatible with a passive solar floor plan. Skousen suggests incorporating long, narrow hallways, straight staircases, airlocks (aka mud/utility rooms at entrances), and other "choke points" where invaders would have only one direction of travel and be very exposed while doing so, while you could stay behind cover and take them out. The passive solar floor plans I've seen look fairly open, which would give invaders multiple directions of travel at any time.

As far as defending against invaders who haven't yet entered, your best options are to deny them cover, and to install some sort of motion/driveway alarm that would let you know they're out there. Keep shrubbery next to the house low enough that it doesn't obscure windows, and select plants that have thorns as your hedges or to accent your fence lines.

 

[ceetee]

I have to second FerFAL's comments. You should also research the builders in the general area, looking for one that has a history of building secure facilities. Even small ones like check cashing stores present their own problems. I'm in the construction industry, not creating the plans, but building them. You'd be quite surprised at how often architects and engineers with decades of practical experience designing modern buildings put things down on paper that just won't work in the real world.

Something to keep inthe back of your mind is the concept of layers. Through hostile shrubbery, make the outside of the house difficult to approach except from a couple directions. Specify hurricane-rated doors and windows. I'm not saying they can't be kicked in, but it'll be difficult. (I'm speaking from actual experience with that one.) As has been mentioned, use the airlock or sallyport concept. Try to keep the sleeping quarterrs approachable from only one direction, and them make that one approach easy to control.

 

[YammyMonkey]

If you have a hallway from the main living area going to the bedrooms you could install a Browning vault door or similar & secure it at night. You might also want to look into 3M's Scotch Shield window coatings. They won't make the window bullet proof, but very difficult for someone to break out & gain entry.

Some of the things I've seen that really indicate the lack of security mindset in a lot of folks:

Hollow core interior door used as main front door (duh, duh, duh, duh)
Doors with large windows in them (someone can see into your house, see you coming, break it in & walk right in...)
Windows next to doors (break the glass, reach through & unlock)
Exterior doors (check your garage) that open out (allow easy access to the bolt)
Storing useful B&E tools in a lightly (if at all) secured shed/garage

 

[Nicolai]

Col. Cooper's book, To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Speak the Truth, has a short chapter called "Notes on Tactical Residential Architecture." Lots of his points in that chapter have been discussed here (including door arrangement and full perimeter view), but, hey, it's an excuse to reread a Col. Cooper classic. I seem to recall an interview Jim Scoutten did with Col. Cooper at the Sconce and think I remember the entry--a remote controlled-gate--visitors couldn't get closer to the front door than the gate without being identified and buzzed in. Think he also had a safe room (don't for a second think that Col. Cooper would have a "panic" room).
Don't know much about rammed earth construction, but that technique has a reputation for energy efficiency and strength.
Good luck with the project.

 

[RoadkingLarry]

Lighting, access, egress, safe rooms, angles of attack all sorts of things to consider. as above consult a professional.

Of course as a last resort...

 

[guitararmy]

Safe House

I assume an alarm system is in there somewhere? I'll admit I don't arm mine as often as I should--our pet birds set off the glass breakage sensor!

 

[Chuck R.]

We bought 40 acres a couple years ago and are also researching home design, not so much for security, as for energy efficiency. We decided on ICF construction.

Check out ICF:

http://www.rewardwalls.com/h_selectabuilder.html

http://www.owenscorning.com/foldform/fold-form_blocks.asp


I think the norm is 6-8” concrete with foam on both sides, but I read they could be up to 16”. The construction cost is slightly more than frame, but the energy efficiency, noise reduction, and wind resistance (in your case bullet resistance) are superior to a framed house.

16" of reienforced concrete aught to stop something.

Chuck

 

[BullfrogKen]

KBintheSLC said: just locking your doors and windows will exponentially reduce the chances of you being caught off guard. Make the intruder "break" in, not "waltz" in through an open window/door.

You can't make a residential dwelling immune to a break in. You CAN harden it enough such that the common burglar will get frustrated and move onto someplace else. As mentioned, the simple act of locking doors and windows is the most effective deterant you have, and the one most often cited as overlooked in the simple burglary.

Or even rapes. Last year the local college experienced 3 rapes among students living in homes off campus. Every single once of them had one element in common - the residents failed to keep the doors locked. The rapist merely walked right in.


Certainly home design helps. Avoid blind corners and hallways in the plans. But construction is more important than design. The best design, constructed with poor materials, still sucks. Use 3" screws on the hinges of steel doors to secure the door to the studs, not just the frame. Use a long, wide strike plate, and do the same. My house has the exterior lights on a 3 way switch with one in the master bedroom.


If you want to construct a bunker, that's certainly an option. But simple things like good construction and strong, quality materials go a long way towards making your house harder to enter.

 

[oobray]

I am a college student studying criminal justice. I just wrote a HUGE research paper studying Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED). I studied the layouts of thousands of homes and applied the basic principals of the CPTED theories to assess risk factors. This is what I found.

If you live in a suburban style neighborhood...

1) make sure that you have lights that are adequatly illuminating the possible entry points to your house. Also, it's always a good idea to have some light come inside from those outside lights, that way you can see atleast a little bit throughout the house and hallways without using a flashlight or turning on lights

2) Short bushes (about 2-3ft in hight) around the perimeter of your house, which are planted up against house walls are very good! They keep possible intruders from "casing" your house because they cannot get up to the window to see in, and it makes it much harder to get through a broken/open window.

3) Dead bolts on all doors which are atleast 3in. long and reinforced door frames. It is AMAZINGLY easy to kick in a deadbolted door. I used to do it all the time when I was working as a paramedic

4) The most important aspect of designing the interior is to make sure that you are between the most likely entry points (front and back doors etc) and your children. As well as making sure that you can easily get to those rooms without having to expose yourself by walking through large rooms.

So for example, you might want to design a three bedroom house to where you have all three rooms located at the end of a hallway with the master bedroom closest to the open end. That way you can face the threat, back in to each room to check on the people in those rooms.

 

[fireflyfather]

Wouldn't the weight of the sand tend to bulge (and perhaps even push loose from the studs) the drywall as you get close to the floor?

Yep. So, enclose that sand in sandbags, etc, and reinforce with dowels, chicken wire, etc.

As for using kevlar in the walls, that won't do squat unless you have something solid backing the kevlar. Kevlar by itself is about as useful as a sheet of burlap or canvas. Even wimpy rounds will go right through.