Our Allotment Shed

From a Customer, by email - edited by Martyn:

Me and 7 others share a large lockup shed on our allotment patch.

Over the past 3 years it has been broken into over 40 times, no matter how big a padlock we put on the door. 

We once found someone kipping in there, on another occasion we found used needles and syringes, another time used condoms, empty lager cans and their consequent 'product' - you can probably guess the rest, it wasn't pretty and didn't smell nice.

Inside the shed is a large lockable metal cabinet which usually survives and keeps our tools safe.  We never left anything of great value in there though, which meant a couple of people had to take tools and anything nickable home in the back of the car after working the ground.  Course, then they'd have to clean the back of the car out!  Although this didn't affect me, I live quite close, the overall hassle was getting to be a PITA.

Basically we'd had enough.  We were always paying to replace the padlock, mend the door and 'clean' the mess.  We all chipped in 50 quid and got a boat alarm from Martyn [Editors note, Nautilarm Basic GSM Kit - £349.99] much to the amusement of others on the allotments.  We also got a small solar panel charging an old car battery which powers the alarm.

We hid the control unit inside the lockable metal cabinet along with the battery.  Drilled a hole in the top of the cabinet for the aerial and hid the wire from the solar panel.  Set the unit to send messages to me and two others who live nearby.

Less than a week later while I was sat in front of the telly my phone beeps with a message that the alarm's going off.  I leg it to the allotment (which backs on to my back garden) to find the door ripped open and a couple of likely looking lads running off toward the estate.

We fixed the door, again, and decided we weren't going to bother with a big padlock any more, as ripping it off causes too much damage.  We put a small one on instead.  Over the next couple of months we had several more breakins, we got there quickly every time.  Word soon got around and as I write this [January 2009], we've not had one breakin over the Winter, that's 5 months now - result!

These days we're alright with leaving our tools etc in there, along with a few bottles of winter-warmer!

Cheers Martyn, top bloke, top alarm, top service!

Martyn says:  Thanks for that!  The way the weather's going, can I sell you a flood sensor?  :-)