For commercial or industrial property, chain link fencing is a key part of perimeter security. Whether you're worried about teenagers sneaking onto your property to drink or more serious intrusions by thieves looking for things to steal, it's important to restrict access to your site. The more difficult access to an area is, the more people will be deterred from attempting to gain entry.
However, a truly committed person is still a force to be reckoned with. Listed below, you will find some of the ways that people try to gain access to sites protected by chain link fencing as well as recommendations for how to prevent them.
Climbing Over Fence
To stop people from climbing over your fence, there's quite a bit you can do. Many properties rely on fences with small mesh or increased height. But while this may be enough if your biggest worry is teenagers, a committed intruder can still use a secondary object like a tree or ladder to get over such fences.
If more security is necessary — for instance, you are storing building materials like copper or metal that are popular targets of thieves or you are fencing off a high-security warehouse — adding barbed wire to the top of a fence is a huge deterrent to anyone looking to climb over.
Pulling Up Bottom Of Mesh
If a person can't get over a fence, they may try to get under it. Pulling up the mesh to create a gap in the bottom of the fence is another common way that people try to get past security fences. There are two main ways that you can secure the bottom of a chain link fence against this. First, you can continue the mesh down into the ground, burying it deeply so that it can't simply be pulled up. Second, you can install a bottom rail on the fencing, removing the flexibility that allows mesh to be pulled up.
Cutting Fence
Anyone looking to cut through a chain link fence has come prepared — usually with wire cutters or bolt cutters. To an intruder this determined, you want to make the job as difficult and time-consuming as possible. The longer it takes and the heavier tools it requires, the more likely a person is to give up or be caught by security.
Thick-gauge wire is more difficult to cut through, giving added security. For wire gauges, the lower the number, the thicker the wire — so aim for less than 12-gauge wire in your chain link fence. In addition, using a small mesh size leaves less room and leverage for cutting tools. The most extreme solution is a second line of security fencing, doubling the amount of time it takes to get past the fence.
Removing Bolts
To prevent an intruder from disassembling a part of the fence to get past, you can have the bolts that hold the fence together peened. This means deforming the ends of the bolts by striking them; this is where ball-peen hammers get their name. Bolts that have had their ends flattened this way can no longer be unscrewed as they won't fit back out through the holes and nuts they have been installed into.
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