If you are anything like me you probably have a massive pile of really important papers shoved into files and cabinets. I never know quite what needs to be kept and for how long. It becomes quite the chore when tax season rolls around and I need to sift through all these papers. I’m really worried that one day I’ll accidently throw out something really important thinking it is just another receipt. This has spurred me to figure out exactly what I need to keep and for how long and come up with some similar storage solutions. Here’s hoping this works and helps me out with my own security solution.

This was incredibly helpful to me for getting my “paper life” into order. If you are interested in learning more or reading the original article where all this came from, please check it out here.

Ever wonder what’s going on in your town or city? Well, if you live in Seattle, you can check out http://spdblotter.seattle.gov/ for all the latest activity with the Seattle Police Department. It’s a great way to stay involved with your town and really keep on top of al the crime reports. Tough I haven’t checked it out for additional cities I bet with some Googling you can find your city – even if you aren’t from Seattle.

If you are from Seattle, you can search by Precinct and see what arrests and activity have been taking place in your neighborhood.

By better understanding the type and location of crime, you will be better able to anticipate the type of home security systems that will keep your home and business safe. We can help you with all sorts of your security needs:

c   Home security alarms

c   Fire alarms

c   24 hour alarm monitoring

c   Carbon Monoxide detection

c   Digital video surveillance

c   Automatic water detection and shut off

c   Environmental monitoring

c   Intercom systems

c   Safes, vaults, and depositories,

c   Locksmith services

If you are interested, we’d love to talk to you about all our great security solutions for you! Give us a call today!

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As much as you can do to prepare your home from robbers or other criminals, we all depend on our local police departments to keep criminals off the street. Have you had a really great experience with a local PC officer? We’d love to hear about it.

At Allied Fire and Security we specialize in getting your home and business set up with the best security possible. We know that there are many MANY different businesses out there and that those businesses all have different security needs. For example, financial institutions have very specialized needs as they often have very important and secure information about their clients such as social security numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers and whatnot. Financial institutions require media storage solutions but they don’t often have much in the way of cash on hand. Contrast this to a retail business which deals in large amounts of cash daily, strangers coming in and out of a business all day long, and many (often part time) employees. As you can see, the needs of these different businesses are largely different and so we think that the security and safety set ups ought to be as different as well.

Business security is an increasingly important focus of business owners and executives everywhere. Criminal activity in the workplace continues to cost businesses, institutions and agencies millions of dollars each year. Even more important are the injuries, traumas and deaths that occur because of these criminals.

In the realm of business, we have specialized business solutions for your retail business, your healthcare business, your financial security institution, your industrial and commercial businesses, the safety and security of your education center and higher education centers, the security of your hospital, security of government buildings, and enterprise solution group security.

Our job is to help you prevent and react to criminal activity in your workplace. From locks and safes, to electronic security, we will assist you with all facets of your security needs, saving you time and money.

Call or visit one of Allied’s three Northwest branches to schedule a survey of your business’ security needs.

Contact a representative for a FREE business security estimate.

We’ve told you how important it is to have smoke detectors in your home but now we want to remind you that having them in your home isn’t enough—they need to have their batteries check (and changed) every six months. I hope the video below will help you if you have any questions about how to change the batteries in your smoke detector.

We all know that smoke detectors are an essential part of our home safety and security system—even if motion detecting cameras and infrared sensors aren’t standard in your home, I will bet that you have one smoke detector in every room of the house. Am I right? There are essentially two types of smoke detectors—a photoelectric detector and an ionization detector. A photoelectric smoke detector senses the presence of smoke in a room by optical detection rather than a physical process (as in the case of ionization detectors).

An optical smoke detector uses a light sensor to collimate a light into a beam that then passes in front of the detector. In the absence of smoke, this beam passes in a straight line. When smoke enters the chamber, the beam is scattered by the smoke and is directed at the sensor. This causes the sensor (and thus the alarm) to go off.  It’s generally agreed that photoelectric smoke detection is more response to gives that begin with a period of smoldering but react more slowly to rapidly growing fires. Because of this, many experts recommend installing a “combination alarm” or one that can detect both heat and smoke or that uses both ionization and photoelectric processes.

At Allied Home and Security, we recommend that you install a combination alarm in every room of your home and that you check (and replace) batteries every six months. This ensures that in the case of a real fire with real danger to your family you will be ready. Do you have a combination smoke alarm in your home?