Locking your garage door doesn’t mean your bike is safe. Most garage doors are easy for thieves to break into. So how to secure a bike in a garage?
The best way to protect your bike is to secure both the garage door and the bike. That provides two levels of defences.
Even if thieves find a way to get into the door, they’ll have a hard time getting away with the bike.
How Easy is it For Thieves to Break Into a Garage Door?
Most garage doors are surprisingly easy to break into. Burglars have found different weak points that they exploit.
The most common one is the emergency release lever. This is a lever that you pull to disconnect your garage door from the electric opener, allowing you to open the garage door manually. It’s usually connected to a long cord for pulling.
Thieves can access this level from the outside, either by reaching the cord and pulling it, or by hooking a wire onto the lever and pulling it free.
Thieves have also been known to use brute force to force the door to slide upwards or bend inwards.
Burglars can also mess with your garage door locking mechanism, if it’s accessible. If you have an automated or smart garage door opener, they can hack it and open the door themselves.
How to Secure A Bike in a Garage
The most important thing is to secure your bike to something solid in the garage. That way, thieves can’t easily carry the bike away.
One of the best solutions is a ground anchor. Your drill holes in the garage floor, then secure the anchor to the ground using bolts.
Ground anchors are low priced and you can get one that’s strong enough to secure a bicycle or a motor bike.
The other option is a wall anchor. Instead of bolting it to the floor, you bolt it to the wall and then secure your bike to it. Note that some anchors can be used as either ground or wall anchors.
Whichever type of anchor you get, you’ll need to use it with a cable or chain. Get a high quality steel cable or chain, and tie it around your bike frame (not the wheels).
It’s also a smart idea to prepare for the worst, in case thieves do manage to get away with your bike. Installing a GPS bike tracker increases the chances of recovering your stolen bike.
You should also consider registering your bike on BikeRegister.com. It deters thieves from stealing it (if you have the Bike Register marker) and makes it more likely to find it if it is stolen.
How to Secure the Garage Door
The best security for your bike is to stop thieves from getting into the garage in the first place.
If you have an automated garage door with an emergency release lever, lock the lever to the carriage assembly using a zip tie and shorten or remove the pull cord.
Also, consider adding a lock to your garage door, either on the outside or inside. But remember to unlock it before activating the electric garage door opener. Otherwise, you could damage the motor.
Another great way to secure your garage door from the outside is using a garage defender. You install it right in front of the garage door. It’ll prevent the garage door from being forced open.
A garage defender only works for up and over garage doors.
We also recommend other common security measures including an alarm, security cameras and adequate lighting.
