I bought a reinforced steel cage that fits over the HVAC cabinet and then locks down to the concrete slab the HVAC equipment sits on
So there is a trend in criminality that targets the HVAC equipment outside your home. This is a sort of smash and grab burglary done by some fairly desperate thieves. I think you’d have to be pretty desperate to just show up and ransack someone’s HVAC compressor and condenser cabinet. Many of these burglaries happen in broad daylight while the homeowner isn’t there. The thieves simply rip open the HVAC cabinet and rip out what they’re after and then run off as fast as they showed up. In other cases, these criminals show up in the middle of the night, cut power to the HVAC cabinet and go about wrecking the HVAC equipment. What’s even worse about all of this is the fact that they’re not even after the valuable HVAC equipment. There are thousands of dollars worth of valuable heating and cooling components inside the HVAC cabinet. But stuff like the compressor are just tossed aside. The complete destruction of the HVAC equipment is all so these people can get their hands on the copper fittings. All of this for a handful of copper tubing that then gets sold on the black market for pennies on the dollar. It’s almost to absurd to be true. Unfortunately, it is very much true. I for one have decided to protect the HVAC cabinet. I bought a reinforced steel cage that fits over the HVAC cabinet and then locks down to the concrete slab the HVAC equipment sits on. It sort of stuns me that I have to go to these lengths in order to protect my property. But I just can’t sit by and allow my HVAC unit to be ripped apart so a desperate soul can get a few bucks worth of copper.