"Jon Anderson" wrote in message
...
I love this group! Lots of great ideas and input.
This is a rental, and to our advantage, it looks closer to a trailer
trash type home than the surrounding mansions built by folks moving up
from the big cities. Would love to move but it's hard to find rentals
with 650 sq/ft of shop space and a landlord that approves of a machine
shop in the garage at a price about 1/2 the going rate....

Regarding autodialers and 911, I have a leg up there. Wife works for the
county jail and our home phone triggers a special alert at the 911
center. It will get a much better response than an average 911 call. (or
so we've been told) Still, I have found some monitoring services that
are very reasonable and the added weight that carries will probably lead
me to signing up with one.

I am going to install a wireless driveway sensor well up the road and it
will trigger a VCR to capture anyone driving in or out. I want to start
collecting license numbers of unknown cars.

I like the smoke idea. Would love to build a honkin' huge gate on the
driveway, but that's not perfect.

You don't need perfect, you need really good. Really good means multiple
layers, the first layer being the gate, at the road. This means they have to
defeat your first defence in the open, where passerby's can and might see
the leeches trying to defeat your well designed, smart looking gate. A man
on foot can't very well clean out your shop, they need to get a vehicle to
your building. Any gate can be defeated, but will they try, or look for a
lesser defended target? After that a real noisy, alert dog or several of
them, then random in house lighting, no discernable pattern of they're
home-they're gone, vehicles parked randomly, hard or impossible to reach
motion sensing lighting, hardened windows and doors, and a decent alarm
system. Criminals are pretty lazy, your shop doesn't have to be
impenetrable, just too much trouble. If that doesn't do the trick, you might
want to become good friends with your insurance agent : )

House is two story, for the upstairs
all but the front door and kitchen window are inaccessible without a
ladder. Unfortunately 2nd story is level with the road and the deck has
a walkway right up to the road. A lot of stuff could still be carted off
pretty quickly.

Of course, my best defense is just being here, and most of the time I
am.

Appreciate all the great input!

Jon