Unitec Break In

[OCSJOHN]

Arrived at my wash sunday morning to find the entire Unitec WSII missing from one of my pay kiosks. Had a guy destroy block/concrete surround using crow bars/sledge hammer. Luckily, I had a camera installed in the machine and was also able to capture his license plate as he made his exit through my wash bay. Police were able to identify the individual and have warrants out for him but haven't been able to track him down yet.

 

[Bubbles Galore]

never a good thing. At least you were able to identify him. Times like this make security cameras worth there weight in gold.

 

[bigleo48]

Bastards! That really sucks

You mentioned you found out about it in the morning, did you not have an alarm contact on the unit that's tied to your alarm system? My contact is set as a cash machine and so if the alarm is tripped my security company calls the police direct. Also, my alarm system is wireless, so they don't get away with cutting the phone wire.

When you rebuild it you may want to consider a poured concrete enclosure using a plastic form (like Royal or Extrutech). Relatively cheap and easy to construct. They would not have been able to do that to mine

Big

 

[pitzerwm]

I filled my blocks with rebar and concrete.

 

[GoBuckeyes]

Was your machine even anchored to anything or just sitting in there? Usually we weld our machine to steel embedded in a concrete base or at least use 4 or 5 big concrete anchors to secure it.

 

[OCSJOHN]

Was your machine even anchored to anything or just sitting in there? Usually we weld our machine to steel embedded in a concrete base or at least use 4 or 5 big concrete anchors to secure it.

No, it was basically sitting in there waiting to be taken. My contractor and initial equipment distributor dropped the ball on this 2 years ago when I built the wash and back then I was too naive/busy to notice.

Did have some great news last week. Police arrested the guy who did it and recovered my machine last week. He did about 5k in damage to the unit but I've already gotten that fixed and that sure beats 15k for a new one. My service guy came down on monday and we built a steel frame that it is now welded to and it will be blocked up again by the weekend.

As soon as I can get this one finished I'm going to have to tear down the other one and do the same thing to it because it was build/installed just as poorly.

Bigleo, I didn't have alarm contacts on the machines but that is about to change as well. Had I had them when this happened I would have known 8 hours earlier and might have captured the guy/recovered my machine much earlier.