How to Secure Your Doors

Ensuring that your house is safe from burglars is something that every homeowner strives to do. And one of the most important areas of your home to secure is your door.

Type of Door

The type of door that protects your home is very important. Make sure that you are not using a hollow wooden door to keep intruders out. You need to use a solid core wood door instead, which is much sturdier than a hollow wooden door. A solid metal door is also a good choice for protecting your home. As an added bonus metal doors will not warp, rot, or bend over time.

Latch Strike

A high quality latch strike will also help to keep intruders out. Strike latches come in different sizes and shapes, and some of them are called latch strike boxes. Latch strike boxes fit further back in the wood, and will fit around the deadbolt when you have it in the locked position. Latch strike boxes are arguably some of the better types of latch strikes that you can buy.

It is important for you to remember to try and use high quality screws that are at least three inches in length to secure your latch strike into the wood. These screws will help to reinforce the strike latch in the event of a burglar attempting to kick in your door. If the screws are too short, then they may fail to lock into enough wood to make a difference. This is especially important when your latch strike only has two holes for screws. Some latch strikes can have six or more.

Deadbolts

Deadbolt locks are your best bet at keeping intruders from having easy access to your home. However, some deadbolts will offer better protection than others. You can easily determine how good your lock is by looking for the ANSI grade. The ANSI grade ranges from a level three to a level one rating. The level one rating is the highest, while the number three is lowest. And yes, you guessed it, level two is second best.

You may also elect to use a single cylinder deadbolt or a double cylinder deadbolt for your lock as well. When you use a single cylinder deadbolt, one side will have a knob that you turn to lock your door. The other side will have a key. These are preferred by many individuals because they make exiting in a fire situation ideal.

Of course, it also make it a little easier for a burglar to access if the door has a glass window. So do not use this type of lock near glass if possible. A double cylinder lock eliminates this problem by requiring a key for both sides. Unfortunately, this also makes it more difficult to open the door in the event of a fire. So there are trade offs between each type of lock.

SmartKeys

Deadbolts that also use the SmartKey feature will make your life easier, and a little safer too. The SmartKey allows you to easily re-key your own locks. So you save money by not needing a locksmith to come out and re-key your locks in the event that you want to change them. It only takes about thirty seconds to do, and you can also create temporary keys to make your home safer.

The idea behind a temporary key is to use the re-keying feature of your lock to briefly create a key for someone else that you do not know. So if the cable repairman comes by, you can give him access to your home via the temporary key. And when the cable guy is finished, you can just re-key your lock for your normal key. Thus, if the unknown person that you allowed into your home steals the temporary key and tries to break in with it later; they are out of luck because you will have re-keyed the lock by then. So the temporary key will no longer work.

Door Jammer

A door jammer is a very basic but useful type of security for your door. It is basically just a metal bar that fits under your door handle. There is a rubber fitting on the bottom of the metal bar that holds it in place on your floor. The only real disadvantage to the door jammer is the fact that if you forget that it is there, you could be in trouble. Since there is no key or anything you have to remove it from the inside. If you forget, you will probably be locked out. Unless you try kicking in your own door (not advised).

Securing your door is an integral part of denying your home to the criminal element that resides in every part of the world. Just remember, there are many different types of security hardware out there. Pick wisely.