Today a Mexican woman called me to ask if I could help her remove a gold ring that was stuck on her finger. Immediately my mind started racing to come up with a solution for her. Ultimately I realized that before proceeding with any of my very dangerous ideas, I’d need to write up an airtight hold-harmless agreement—in Spanish—for her to sign. I told her that I mostly focus on residential stuff and then sent her the phone number of a Spanish-speaking jeweler a few blocks from her home. I really want to call her back to find out what happened.
Author: admin
Polycarbonate Sheeting for Window Security
Sometimes when customers express concern about having a window right next to a deadbolt, I tell them they can screw some polycarbonate sheeting over the window. Polycarbonate is clear, flexible, and very hard to break. It’s sometimes known as Lexan. You can go on YouTube and find videos of burly men trying unsuccessfully to shatter it with an assortment of hammers. It makes a huge racket but remains intact.
Here’s one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ8G0XqLpeA
I covered the windows in my garage with the stuff. I chose to leave on the white protective film to prevent people from peering in but still allow a bit of natural light to shine through. The film peels right off. If the Lexan is intended for a door or window that needs to be a little more attractive, it’s certainly possible to use smaller screws, or even ones with little decorative covers. In most cases its purpose would be to prevent an easy reach-in, so it doesn’t necessarily need to be affixed with so many screws that it looks like part of an aircraft.
I got this 1/8” sheeting at TAP Plastics in Seattle. The material is not cheap, but they sell it for quite a bit less than any vendors I found on the major online marketplaces. TAP even cut it down to size for me. Some of these products tend to yellow and turn brittle when exposed to constant sunlight, but TAP’s product is UV-stabilized and supposedly doesn’t do that. Still, it does lose integrity over time and after 20 years it might be worth replacing it. And one thing you have to watch out for is scratching. Though breaking it is a real challenge, scuffing it is easy.
This is one more useful tool to consider employing as part of your overall home security strategy.
The Case Against Samsung‘s Smart Mortise Locks
Sometimes I’m called upon to install Samsung mortise locks that customers have purchased from Amazon. These are not my favorite locks to install and I would not install one in my own home.
Samsung offers a variety of sleek digital locks with lots of cool features, including keypad entry, RFID key fob entry, and fingerprint recognition. These locks look like they were designed for the set of Star Trek: The Next Generation. They’re like a 20th-century conception of a futuristic lock. And they usually work. As far as I can tell, none of them have the capability of wirelessly linking into a smart home system. I’m sure that’s coming.
My biggest qualm is that they require a nonstandard door preparation. If you don’t already have a Samsung mortise lock in your door, installing one will require some significant door modification. Regardless of what kind of lock you currently have, it will be necessary to put new holes in your door. If you currently have a standard mortise lock (made by Baldwin, Sargent, Corbin Russwin, etc.), you will also likely have to fill in some of the spaces that are already in the door to assure a snug fit. I suppose this would all be fine if you expected this lock to last for 100 years like those other ones would. But this is a piece of electronics you’d be mounting to your door. Just like with your laptop and your smart phone, it’s likely that in a few years you’d want a new model. Would you then have to stick to the Samsung line because that’s what your door is prepped for? Are you confident you’d still want this brand in a few years? Will Samsung still be selling locks by that time that require this same door prep? Unless you’re pretty comfortable with the idea of replacing your whole door with the next lock change, this should heavily influence your consideration of this line of locks.
I also doubt how focused on security the designers of these locks were. To their credit, these are mortise locks, which are typically more secure than the standard cylindrical locks we find on most doors. The backup key holes are located in a part of the lock that would make them hard to pick. Additionally, they cannot be bumped and the keys themselves are relatively hard to duplicate (which is not always a great thing). Finding someone to rekey the locks would be a particularly interesting challenge. The strikeplates for these locks are lightweight and come with very short screws. It’s certainly possible to install a heftier strikeplate and to secure it to the frame of the house using long screws. But the fact that this isn’t included with the lock makes me think that withstanding a brute-force attack is not the main purpose of these locks. And as far as I can tell, none of these locks have been scored by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), which is the principal authority for rating locks.
Although Samsung’s locks are packed with cool features and aesthetic appeal, the actual security they provide does not justify their high cost, the difficulty of installation, and the problems you encounter when you want to replace them.
Diagnosing and Treating a Sticky Lock
So your deadbolt is sticky, is it? Let’s see if we can do something about that.
STEP 1
Check to see if there’s molasses all over your lock. Molasses is water soluble. Try cleaning it with a damp rag. If the lock doesn’t have molasses all over it, then “sticky” is not a very telling description of the problem.
STEP 2
(The door should remain open throughout this step.)
Try operating the deadbolt from the inside, using the thumbturn. Does it work fine? Go to Step 3.
Is it still hard to work the deadbolt with the thumbturn while the door is open? If so, loosen both of those screws holding the thumbturn on, just enough so that you can slide the thumbturn about a quarter of an inch in any direction. With your left hand holding the circular edge of the thumburn and your right hand on the flippy thing (technical term), try shifting the thumbturn this way and that, and testing to see if you can find a position in which the flippy thing extends and retracts the bolt with ease. If you find a sweet spot, hold the thumbturn in place, tighten the screws back up, and test the lock again. Is it beer-thirty yet? If not, you can also try rotating the outside half of the lock (the part with the keyhole) this way and that while testing the flippy thing.
Now look at the bolt assembly. Is any part of it obviously broken? If so, you need a new lock. If not, look for a + or – in the center of the bolt assembly and use your screwdriver to manually turn it one way or the other, extending or retracting the bolt. Can you work it easily? Is any moving part consistently hitting or rubbing up against a stationary piece of wood? If so, you need to resolve that somehow. If you can use the screwdriver to operate the bolt with ease, then I’m stumped. You’d better call a locksmith.
Now put your lock back together and have a beer while you consider your next move.
STEP 3
With the door still open, put the key into the keyhole. Did it go in smoothly?Good! Skip to Step 4.
If not, try some other keys. None of them go in? Spray some of that WD-40 into the keyhole. Did that fix the problem? Great! Go have a beer.
STEP 4
Keep the door open throughout all of Step 4.
Test to see if you can turn the key freely to easily extend and retract the bolt. If that works, go to Step 5.
The keyhole in this lock is situated in the lock cylinder. Do you see a tiny hole to the left of the keyhole, or a plus sign directly above the keyhole? No to both? Read on. Yes to one of those? Your cylinder is failing and it’s time to buy a new lock.
Another Bad Lock Modification
A property manager called me because the door to an apartment building’s laundry room had been forced open and he needed me to replace the knob. This has been happening a lot lately in Seattle. People are after those quarters.
I put on a Grade-2 commercial clutched entry lever. When a standard (non-clutched) lever is locked, it feels so to the touch; it’s rigid and you can’t push down on it to open the door. With a clutched lever, if the door is locked the lever can still be pressed down but it won’t pull the latch to open the door. This prevents a large man from putting all his weight on the lever and forcing the door open. Clutched levers are appropriate for exterior doors and rigid ones are a little better for individual offices inside a building. The clutched ones are more secure but carry a greater risk of lockouts, as it’s easy for the inattentive user to mistakenly think they’re unlocked.
It occurred to me after I installed and rekeyed the new lock that the door really needed a storeroom lever, not an entry lever. Storeroom levers automatically lock every time they close and they cannot be left unlocked, though they can always be freely opened from the inside. I didn’t have a storeroom lever in my van. Instead I modified the entry lever I’d already installed.
On the inside half of the lever, I pushed and turned the push-turn button to the locked position. Then I drilled a tiny hole from the outside of the lever straight through the depressed push-turn button. Next I drove a small finish nail into the hole, cut it off, peened the end, and filed it smooth with the surface of the lever. It left a little blemish on the hardware. With that nail through the push-turn button, no one can ever unlock that door and leave the room unsecured. The lock now functions like a storeroom lever.
This was dumb and I shouldn’t have done it. The lock will now be very hard to service or remove from the door. The first step to disassembling a lock like this is to separate the inside lever from the chassis. Well, that button is part of the chassis, and it’s now semi-permanently fixed to the inside lever. If someone ever wants to take the lock off that door, they’ll have to figure out a way to dig the nail out or they’ll need to saw off the inner lever.
If I’d exercised a little more forethought, I might have drilled my hole in from the top of the lever and had it come clear out the bottom side. Then if the lever ever needed to be removed, one could lightly tap the nail from the top to have it come out the bottom. But really I should have just used the right piece of hardware in the first place.
The good news is that the lever should last for at least a couple of decades, well beyond the point that some developer decides to gut and remodel that building. And if someone does need the lever removed, I’m the guy they’ll call anyway. I’ll have a headache of a job on my hands but I won’t need to ‘fess up to my mistake.
Choosing a Schlage Keypad Lock
In my opinion, Schlage makes the best and most reliable keypad deadbolts. They offer two basic levels of deadbolt.
For $100 you can get the no-frills BE365. This is a good Grade-2 lock. It’s not incredibly intuitive for first-time users, though. It has a knob on the front of it under the keypad. Under normal circumstances the knob spins freely and does nothing. But the user code engages that knob so it can be used to throw or retract the bolt. I’ve seen people punch in the code and then scratch their heads waiting for the deadbolt to unlock itself, not realizing they have to manually control the bolt with the knob. Once you’ve used it once, it’s easy. But this may not be the best option for Airbnb. Also, using the backup key with these locks requires a lesson. Half the time after I’ve given this lesson, my customer will say something to the effect of, “Well, I hope I never have to do that.” The key is principally for use when the battery dies. The 9-volt battery lasts for about three years. Changing it requires the removal of two screws. Installation is fairly simple, except that without a bit of door surgery the BE365 cannot be installed in doors with a 1-1/2” bore; it requires the more standard 2-1/8” bore.
For around $200 you can get a Grade-1 lock with all the bells and whistles—either the Schlage Connect or the Schlage Sense. Both of these have light-up touchscreens and both have bolts that are battery-powered so nobody will be confused. Using the key in these locks is also just like with a traditional deadbolt. With the right auxiliary equipment, these locks can be controlled with an app, both locally and remotely. These locks can be installed on doors with either bore size. They take 4 AA batteries, which can be replaced without the removal of any screws. Batteries last about a year (depending on use, of course) and for a much shorter period if the latchbolt rubs against the edge of the strikeplate as it extends and retracts.
So what’s the difference between the Connect and the Sense? Well, the Connect links up to your smart home system with Z-Wave technology and the Sense connects to your Apple TV via Bluetooth. For the Connect, Schlage would like you to buy the Nexia Bridge and pay $10/month for the rest of your life to use the more advanced features of these locks. But you can also remotely access the lock through some home security systems such as ADT Pulse. Another option is to buy a Samsung SmartThings hub for $99 and control it with that. The Sense does not work with the earliest versions of the Apple HomeKit, or if the HomeKit is placed too far from the lock. Once you have them all set up, the Sense and the Connect are mostly the same. I’m fairly confident that these locks can be hacked, but I don’t know how to do it and I doubt that your neighborhood meth fiend does, either. And to be fair, those glass windows all over your house are also very hackable.
One more thought before you make a purchase:
Think about all of the hardware on your door. For typical use, your keypad lock should be the only thing on your door that locks. This may mean replacing the locking doorknob with a passage knob (which has no locking function). Imagine that your front door is the regular point of entry for both your kids and your cleaning lady. Your cleaner arrives during the schoolday and gets in with the entry code. On her way out, thinking she’s being very conscientious, she locks both the knob and deadbolt. Your kid doesn’t carry a key because he loses everything and is supposed to be able to get in with just a code. So now he’s going to be calling you at the office when he gets home from school because he’s locked out. Isn’t work supposed to be your respite from stuff like this? Don’t be stingy; plan to also replace the doorknob if appropriate.
Time off from locksmithing.
On Sunday of last week I went to park my van in my brother’s garage before heading to the airport for my annual trip to Mexico. When I got there, Ben asked me if I needed a ride to Seatac. I told him I could catch an Uber. It’s really not a problem, he told me. I did a bit of quick math to calculate the cost to him of driving me, and found that the amount of money I’d save wouldn’t justify his time outlay. I explained all this and he shrugged as if to say, “Suit yourself.”
Half a day later I was in Mexico City, and a day later I was cutting keys in the locksmith shop where I learned my trade. My old friend Alberto, the one-eyed handyman, passed by the locksmith shop and was surprised and happy to see me. He asked if I wanted to come and help him with a project a couple of streets over. I readily accepted the invitation.
It turned out we were doing a job for the couple that runs the fruit smoothie stand on the corner. I’ve only bought one smoothie from them and found it didn’t compare to the ones Benito makes at the other end of the block. Alberto explained that there was a problem with the power line that needed to be fixed right away, because they couldn’t work without power. In the U.S., we would call the power company to take care of this. That’s also an option in Mexico if you don’t mind waiting. Or you just fix the problem.
Alberto took a couple short lengths of rope and used them to expertly shimmy up an electrical pole across the street from the smoothie stand. This is something that he’d done countless times when working for the carnival. My job was to look out for patrol cars, as he obviously wasn’t supposed to be doing this. He wasn’t up the pole for two minutes before I said, “Berto! Patrulla!” and he quickly slid down as we all scattered. When the police car had crept down the street and turned a corner, Al went back up and had me pass him a bundle of cable. I divided my attention between the end of the road from which more police cars would be coming, and Al at work. I watched as he spliced a power cable to create a new line of power. When that was done, he began draping the line across the street and I realized what was going on. The electric company must have discovered a pilfered power connection and disconnected it, effectively putting the smoothie stand out of business. Alberto was running them a new source of power. The ethics of stealing elecricity from the city to run a blender are the topic for another post. But as soon as I understood what was happening, I took my leave and returned to the shop.
When I saw Alberto again later in the day—he stores his tools two doors down from the locksmith shop and is always walking by—I told him I hoped he’d charged his customers appropriately for the job. “Pues si,” he said. He then revealed that he’d received $ 500MXN for the job, or roughly $25. I’m quite certain that what he’d done was a jailable offense. I asked him whether he would accept a job in which he had to do that every day in return for that sum. He understood my point, and said that he didn’t charge an arm and a leg because the customers were working people like him. I understood his point.
Then he and I took off again to go to Manuel’s small appliance repair shop. Mani mostly deals with licuadoras (blenders). In fact, he tried to get me to invest in a venture that he’s working on, which relies on the use of stolen Hamilton Beach molds with which he plans to make aftermarket blender parts to sell to other repairmen like himself. (I declined the opportunity, and told him he ought to seek out the advice of a patent attorney.)
Mani’s shop sits on a quickly gentrifying street near the center of Mexico City, across from a hip sushi bar. One block closer to the center is a campsite not unlike Seattle’s “Jungle”, where a group called “la banda” has set up a permanent campsite. They all huff glue together. For as long as I’ve known him, Manuel has been employing members of this group of junkies, teaching them his trade and sometimes serving as the catalyst for a new start in life. Tonight in the shop, the television is on and a dubbed version of “Ghost” is playing.
His shop is always abuzz with activity: several young men disassembling, soldering, and reassembling various appliances; customers coming up to the counter to pick up or drop off appliances; his grown children visiting; his poodle Rocky sniffing around for foods scraps; and any number of friends and relations coming by to chat. Recently Mani lost 30% of his vision when he failed to properly discharge a microwave before starting work on it. The shock turned the skin on both of his forearms blue. Like me, Mani has hands that are always dirty. He’s a working man, but one with ambitions. The two of his kids that are old enough to have graduated college have both done so. One is a doctor and the other a lawyer.
Just outside the shop, a tweaker has made a home for himself. He’s the most wretched man I’ve ever seen. I would guess him to be about 22, and imagine he’s been huffing glue on the streets since childhood. I’ve never heard him utter a word. He just stumbles down the street to the wall right next to Mani’s shop and plants himself on the stone sidewalk. Sometimes he leans against the wall and sometimes he curls up in the fetal position to sleep. I don’t imagine he’s had a bath in many months. That doesn’t seem to be a part of his program. Sometimes people mess with him, slapping at his head or pretending to stomp and kick him. Seconds later he slowly rolls his head around, grins, and weakly swats at the air, his eyes focused on nothing. He is as thin as anyone I’ve ever seen. Mani says his intestines have fallen out of him and he can’t properly digest food. In a cinematic version of The Divine Comedy, I could easily see this man miserably pushing stones around Dante’s fourth circle of hell.
Another junkie comes by to hang out. This one, Mani explains to us, is partially reformed. He has a woman, a job, and a child. He weighs about 350 pounds, and has a face that is gentle and effeminite despite some prominent scars that betray a difficult past. He greets each of us in turn and then lowers himself into a plastic lawn chair on the sidewalk in front of Mani’s. He offers me a small baggie of loose weed, which I decline. He shrugs as if to say, “Suit yourself.” Then he takes from his pocket a balled-up baggie of something for himself, which he drops into an empty soda bottle and starts taking deep breaths from. He’s talking all the while, but after some minutes his eyelids become heavy and his speech too lazy for me to understand. Eventually he pulls the baggie out of the bottle and holds it betwen his lips as he listens to the rest of us talk.
I slip away and walk down the street to a 7-Eleven. Apart from Mani’s, it’s the only business that’s open on this street. Most places in the city closed in the afternoon because of rumors of mass vandalism, supposedly an angry reaction to a new tax that raised the price of gasoline by 20%. The door is locked, but the young cashier puts up her finger, indicating that I should wait. After she’s checked out the couple that’s in the store, she unlocks the door to let them out and then rushes me in, relocking the door behind me. I buy plastic cups and a two-liter bottle of some kind of carbonated soda cocktail, which I carry back down the street.
When I get to Mani’s, he and Alberto are talking about the blender venture. Two of the junkie workers inside the shop—Rafael and Tapia (who’s missing all of his front teeth)—have stopped working to focus all their attention on the movie. Patrick Swayze is telling Demi Moore that he has to go. Both guys are trying to hide the fact that they’re crying. I hand out cups and we all share the bottle of soda booze. Then it’s time to close up shop.
The shop boys unlock a door next to Mani’s that faces the street, revealing a hallway that’s lined and stacked with appliances. They start pulling out microwaves and carrying them over to the shop, piling them up in the center of the small workspace. One by one, Alberto, Mani, and I rise from the stools that we have in a circle on the sidewalk and join the boys in the effort. There must be 50 microwaves and small refrigerators to be picked up and moved. Al takes a quick break to kick the legs of the ruined tweaker out of the way so an old woman on two canes can get down the sidewalk. The last one of us to heave himself up from his seat and join in the effort is the fat man huffing the break cleaner—or whatever the hell it is. With about seven of us all at the same task, we make quick work of it. Many hands make light work.
This, I think, is what I love about Mexico: the blending of work and play; the common struggle; the generosity of spirit. Life here is hard and people support each other. It’s something that we don’t have as much of in the first world because we have the resources to help ourselves, but it leads to a kind of isolation that may not be healthy. My parents, who grew up in a time when people did need to help each other, pick their neighbors up from the airport even though the drive is an hour each way. Taking an Uber isn’t that expensive, but it’s a much lonelier thing than getting picked up by a friend or a relative. In Mexico, people request and receive, they give and they take. They depend on others and are depended upon. By necessity, they stay connected to the people around them, and this has benefits far beyond the simple favors that are traded.
“Fixing” a Bathroom Lock
Last week I got a call from a restaurant in Woodinville that wanted to replace the failing hardware on its bathroom doors. I suggested I come by with a couple of commercial-grade privacy levers and put them on the doors. Privacy knobs and levers are what we have on our own bathrooms and bedrooms. They lock from the inside more as an indicator of occupancy than an obstacle to entry. They can be unlocked without a key – sometimes with a toothpick or skewer through a little hole on the outside half, and sometimes using a coin in a slot that sort of looks like a keyhole. The restaurant manager said he’d prefer keyed entry levers to provide a real sense of safety in his single-occupancy bathrooms. And he needed this done quickly.
I had reservations, but did as the customer asked. Most commercial-grade knobs and levers have a key difference from residential-grade ones. Rather than having a simple button to lock the door or a turnpiece to lock it, there’s a turn-button that both pushes AND turns. When you just push the button in, the door remains locked until 1) someone opens it with a key from the outside or 2) someone turns the knob or lever from the inside, whereupon the button pops out to the unlocked position. But if you push AND turn, the door remains locked until the turn-button is deliberately returned to the unlocked position (by twisting back to the unlocked position). The trouble is that from the inside, the door always feels unlocked, so you can always turn the knob or lever and walk out without unlocking the door. This is how almost all commercial-grade keyed levers function, and it often causes lockouts. But this is what I installed because it was all I could get quickly to meet the customer’s specifications.
As I drove from the restaurant to the next job, I was kicking myself for not pushing back harder on installing those locks. The management had the keys to the bathroom in case a customer accidentally left one of the doors locked, but I realized it was way too likely that customers would walk into a bathroom, push and twist the turnpiece upon entry, and then walk out of the bathroom without thinking to unlock the door. I wondered to myself how long it would be before I got a call from them. Sure enough, before I’d reached my next job the manager of the restaurant had reached the same conclusion and wanted me to come back to change the locks.
I wasn’t available to return until the next day, so I had a bit of time to think about a solution. These were relatively expensive entry levers I put on his doors, and since they had been installed in bathrooms, it wouldn’t have been right for me to put them back in the boxes and sell them as new to someone else, even if they’d only been in use for half a day. I didn’t want to charge the customer more because I knew I was at fault for failing to stridently object to that lock option. I also didn’t want to eat the cost of these locks myself.
So I came up with another solution. I disabled the turn function on the turn-buttons, so whether a customer pushed or pushed and turned, the doors would never remain locked upon being opened. This was NOT a factory setting. I did this by removing a piece of metal from the lock with a cutoff tool. On the fully assembled lock, there was no visible change to the hardware. But inside the lock, a piece of the chassis had been removed. Since making this change (see photos below) I have not gotten a callback. However, these were ANSI Grade 2 levers, rated for 400,000 cycles. Maybe my alteration will significantly shorten the life of the locks. If I get called back to this restaurant in a few weeks, months, or years, I’ll come back to this post and edit it into a cautionary tale about how not to fix a lock.
Criminal Behavior
I made a mistake that might have amounted to a crime. We’ll say that it was in another state and that the statute of limitations for the offense has expired. But I remember it like it was yesterday.
A property manager whom I know and trust sent me the contact information of a tenant who was having a problem with her lock. In a friendly young voice, the tenant explained that her deadbolt wasn’t working properly. She wasn’t home, but I could go and open her door and fix it in her absence. I would find an operating key on her kitchen counter.
When I arrived at her apartment, I could see that the deadbolt was crooked on her door. I got out my lock picks and felt inside the lock. Everything seemed normal. Within a minute the door was open and I was looking at the inside portion of the lock, which also seemed fine. I went to the kitchen to look for the key to see how it would work in the lock. The counter was piled with stuff — mail, coins, boxes of medicine with Cyrillic lettering on them — but no key that I could find. I scanned the apartment, looking for the key on other surfaces. The sofa had a blanket laid neatly across the cushions. The China cabinet was full of fine ornate dishes and glassware. It suddenly occurred to me that this looked very much like an old lady’s apartment. I took out my phone and called the tenant, who confirmed that I had entered the wrong unit.
I quickly left the apartment and closed the door. After looking down the long hallway in both directions, I crouched down and began to use my lock picks to pick the lock again, but this time to the closed position. But I was nervous and my hands weren’t steady enough for the job. I knew that if someone came out of an apartment and found me messing with the lock of a resident to whom I had absolutely no connection, I could quickly find myself in a lot of trouble, whether or not it was an honest mistake. I could be arrested. I could lose my license. I might have to go back to working in the salt mines. I wasn’t going to be able to do this quickly enough. I gave up on the lock picks.
I stood up and basically fled. Once back to my van, I considered what I should do. I thought about leaving a note and a business card in the woman’s apartment, explaining what had happened and apologizing for the error. But then I thought better of leaving a written confession at the scene of the crime. I considered just leaving the door unlocked and forgetting about it. But leaving some lady’s home unsecured like that would have been pretty unethical. She could have been burglarized. More likely, she might have come home and been deeply unsettled to find her door unlocked. I couldn’t do that. Plus, maybe it would prompt her to have someone pull security camera footage.
I resolved that I had to close the door properly. So I took from my van a tool that I was confident would work to pick the lock very quickly. I slipped the tool into my pocket and started back up the stairs to the apartment. As I was halfway up I heard someone following me up. I slowed my pace and let the person pass me. It was an older woman carrying a bag of vegetables. She looked Russian. I followed her down the hall a little before I said, “Excuse me, are you in 304?” She turned to me as she came to her door and said, “Da, tree-oh-four,” rolling her Rs. She pulled her keys out of her pocket and she eyed me suspiciously.
I told her, “Your door is already open.” Her facial expression did not change. Then I nervously launched into an apologetic ramble about who I was and what had happened. All the while she was saying, “Okay, da, okay,” as she nodded her head at me and used her key in the already-unlocked door. I guess she got tired of me because as I carried on, she reached for the handleset of her front door, pushed down on the thumbpress, and quickly went inside, saying, “OK, thenk you,” through the gap in the closing door. I have no idea whether she had understood me or if she was simply too distracted by me to notice that her key had not retracted the bolt. Either way, it seemed like I didn’t have a problem.
Had she arrived fifteen seconds later and found me crouched at her door trying to manipulate her deadbolt without a key, I believe I would have had a hard time effectively explaining myself to her. Although no harm was done, this was a reminder to take great care when entering the homes of people who are not physically present, even if it seems like I have their permission.
Sliding Glass Doors
Is your sliding glass door locked? Is it secure?
Yesterday I had two very similar lockout calls. On both calls, I showed up and the customer pointed to a door at the front of the house, expecting that I would bypass the offending lock. On both calls I did a tour around the house to find an easier way in. On both calls I quickly got in through the sliding patio door. The first one was straight-up unlocked. That was easy enough. On the second house, the door was locked and I opened it in a matter of seconds without any tools.
It’s easy to leave your sliding door unlocked and let it sit like that for days or weeks. But even when it’s locked, it’s not always that secure. Patio door locks tend to be kind of dinky. Like the majority of locking doorknobs out there, they’re sufficent for keeping out toddlers and the merely curious, but not someone more determined to get in. The kind of patio door lock with two hooks is markedly better than the kind with just one, but retrofitting your door to accommodate that is not worth the trouble. There’s an easier solution.
When I look at sliding glass doors, I check for three things:
1) the dinky little lock should work (to keep out marauding toddlers);
2) should that lock fail, be defeated, or be left unlocked, there should be something in place to keep the door from sliding open;
3) there should be something in the upper part of the track (above the door) to prevent the door from being lifted directly off the track.
Assuming you already have the dinky lock in place and it works properly, the rest of the job is cheap and easy.
To prevent the door from sliding, you could buy and install a Charley Bar, which is a square aluminum rod that sits across the door at about waist level and is, in my opinion, very ugly. They also make locks that sit at floor level and secure the door with a peg that goes into a hole you’ve drilled into the track or the frame of the inactive door. Usually when I encounter these, they’re broken or the peg no longer aligns with the hole because the house has settled and shifted.
Even though it’s too simple a solution to profit handsomely from, I favor the ol’ wooden rod in the track. Specifically, I buy these cedar rods from Home Depot for $2 apiece. They’re 2″ x 2″ x 3′ and tend to fit really snugly right in the track. I’m always careful when I pick them from the pile because many of them are warped or knotted. I like to lay them on the floor to test them for straightness. When I get it to the house, I lay it next to the door and carefully mark where I need to cut it, making sure not to cut off any more than necessary. Sometimes if they sit loosely in the track, they can be flipped out of the track from outside the house.
Occasionally instead of using the cedar rod I cut down a chrome shower curtain rod and cover the ends with cane tips. It’s a lot more attractive and I charge a big markup to reward myself for my ingenuity. In my own house, the cedar rod is good enough.
The next part of this project involves preventing the door from lifting. Check the track above the door. If you see a piece of plastic glued in there, you should go open a beer to celebrate a job well done. Otherwise, you need to put something in there. One option is to cut off a wafer from the end of the remaining cedar rod and screw that into the upper track. The space between the door and the top of the track varies between doors, but you might want the piece to be about 3/8″ thick. Cut two pieces to install above each end of the door in its closed position. Test that they’re not too thick for the door to slide past them before you do any more work. As close to the edges of the wafer as possible, drill some holes and then counter-sink them with a larger drill bit so that the screws will be flush with the surface of the wood. Again, these blocks need to extend as far down as possible without interfering with the motion of the door.
Now screw the pieces of wood into the track. Mark and pilot the holes if necessary. But if you have any sitting around, I’d recommend using 1-1/2″ self-tapping flat-head screws. If you don’t, I’d recommend just using whatever you can find. It’s not that important. You can glue them in place if you want. You can even tape them. But be careful! Cedar is soft. Screw these blocks in too tightly and they will split. Seriously, just breathing too hard around them is almost enough to make them split. If one does split, you have the option of taking the wood, throwing it away, and just leaving the screws in place. That’s a totally legitimate way of doing this project. If you do end up tossing the wood, you’ll be happy that you placed the screws as close to the edges of the track as possible, as the door is often hollow in the middle. Screws in the center of the track won’t keep anyone from lifting the door. Once the pieces are in, test the door for lift. If you can’t lift the closed door off of the track, it’s time for a beer.
Before you put too much work into this project, remember that your door is made of glass. If you were serious about home security, you would put bars on your windows and you wouldn’t have an entry point that could be bypassed with a few light blows from a hammer. You really don’t need to go overboard here, as the goal is to prevent easy break-ins. There are companies out there that will charge you an arm and a leg to put shatter-resistant film on your glass door. As I see it, the biggest benefit to this is that when someone breaks out your window it comes out in one piece and then the cleanup is easier.
As ever, we should not forget that that we all live in glass houses.