Locksmithing and Security

We’ve just been to see Star Trek Into Darkness. Quite enjoyable, but for me the pacing and the plotting were off; and overall the film wasn’t as good as Iron Man 3. (And I’m starting to get really ticked off about all this post-production 3D, which was quite poor in the case of Star Trek Into Darkness. I really must be more careful to look up if new releases were filmed in 3D — I have no problem at all with that — before booking a 3D screening. )

Now, despite my having done my best, my kids have remained culturally impoverished and aren’t really aware of a difference betwen Star Trek and Star Wars. And to tease me further, they widen their feigned ignorance to cover even more of the genre. And I was once foolish enough to let on that confusing apes with monkeys¹ irritated me. So any film that Dad is interested in seeing is referred to by the above title.

1. Did you know that there’s no proper distinction between apes and monkeys in French?  French for ape is big monkey. Sacré bleu!

Quite a few times a customer will point out that a window doesn’t need securing because it’s been painted shut. Sometimes this is intentional; sometimes it is just sloppy work by the bane of my life – painters – painters who paint over locks without masking them off, painters who paint windows sash cords, painters who paint draught strip, etc.

Sometimes a window will look as though it’s been painted shut but is in fact a dummy window that just doesn’t open. Obviously a dummy window is secure and (main point of this post) acceptable to insurance companies.

What about windows that are painted shut? Are they secure? That depends. Are they acceptable to insurace companies?

A casement window that is painted shut is less secure than a sliding sash window. With the normal, outward-opening casement window, it will usually be quite difficult to open it from the outside but easier from the inside. And remember, with a non-tiny window you are also trying to prevent thieves from passing your belongings out through the window.

A sliding sash window that’s been painted shut, on the other hand, will be very difficult to open, from inside or outside.

None of this will cut any ice, however, with insurance companies. If there is a clause that says accessible windows must secured with a key-operated lock, they will stand by that even if a painted-shut window is more difficult to open than one with a cheap lock.

See also:

If it ain’t broke but stiff, fix it

Attention builders and painters

Every so often you come across businesses that you would swear were trying not to make money. And this against a backdrop of  small-to-medium-sized businesses always complaining about how difficult it all is.

I need to put some sound absorbing panels in a room that’s a bit too small for a piano that’s a bit too big. I found a company, in Oxford, seemingly with a fair range of sound-related products. My first enquiry, by email, received a response that the minimum order was not far off £1000. Fair enough: some things can’t be manufactured in small amounts. Then I rang them to ask about another of their products – one that was buyable online – and about delivery costs. “I’ll get back to you”, the chap said. Needless to say, he didn’t; despite my having given him two numbers.

So I rang again and another salesperson gave me the prices. “And what about delivery?”, I said. He quoted £80, plus tax. Well that is crazy for 10 smallish items. OK, I thought, perhaps my having added a couple of extra items has complicated things. Would it be cheaper if I just ordered the ceiling tiles. No, we’d still deliver it by pallet and it would be £50, plus tax. Now, this is for 1 box of 8 tiles. They only sell these tiles in boxes of 8. And they’re going to deliver by pallet and charge me £50! I gave up.

I’ve found another place.

Do you take omega oils supplements. I did (do). But we need to be careful.

Those charming folk in the “healthcare” industry don’t care about our well-being, of course. They care about their profit. Or, rather, their boards of directors care about inflating what they extract from the company.

If you go into Superdrug or Boots, you’ll find that one prominent offering is a Omega 3, 6 & 9. As I understand it, however, in the Western diet, there’s plenty of Omega 6; possibly too much. What we’re most deficient in is Omega 3. Now Omega 3 is more difficult to supply. Basically you want fish oils. What’s easy, and cheap, and profitable for the “healthcare” industry, however, is plant oil, which is … a pretty random mixture of many of the omegas.

So I’m afraid that we westerners have to fish (!) a bit more change out of our pockets and purses and buy the more expensive (but perhaps actually doing you some good) marine Omega 3 supplement.

Some of my colleagues are reporting a rash of broken bolt tails on Union Strongbolt (ironically) mortice deadlocks. This is something of a pain as we got these in in order to replace ERA Fortress mortice deadlocks. The Fortress was failing in so many ways it wasn’t viable to repair them at all; and Strongbolts, from the well-regarded Union brand, were very reasonably priced and were nearly an exact replacement fit. But now the bolt tails are breaking.

They aren’t alone in this, Legge and Assec suffered the same thing a year or two back. The obvious, and almost certainly true, reason for this is that nearly everything is being made in China, where most companies who’ve sent their manufacturing there have no idea how to go about climbing the vertiginous mountain that is getting Chinese factories to do any qualtity control. The bolt tails are probably being die-cast in cheap metal in a cheap process.

You should be all right as long as your mortice deadlock operates without strain. If, however, your door is warped or the lock was badly fitted, and the bolt is fouling the side of its keep as it’s unlocked, then the stress eventually fractures the bolt where the key-curtain mechanism picks up the bolt and withdraws it. A mortice key (the “Chubb”) should turn easily; an arthritic sixty-year-old (me) should be able to turn it using just fingers with no effort at all. If you feel you’re needing to use more force than this, try pulling the door towards you (or more rarely pushing the door away from you) before you turn the key to unlock. If it gets significantly easier then you have got an at-risk bolt and you should always carry out the door pull (or push) before you turn the key. (Turning to lock, rather than to unlock, isn’t as much of a problem, at least as far as breaking the bolt is concerned.)

Luckily, although I’ve bought a fair few of these into stock, I haven’t fitted them yet.

I wonder how buildings in streets get numbered? And by whom?

Living and working fairly near the centre of London, I don’t get to see entire new rows of houses go up. We do see new houses being built in vacant lots; and quite often more buildings are put in than were there before; which leads to the use of ‘A’s and ‘B’s in the numbers.

You think about these things when you’re trying to find a customer’s building. This morning’s conundrum was finding the building in one of those rare roads where the numbers go up one side and then back down the other side in the reverse direction. Also, in London you get used to the convention — at least that’s what I’ve been led to believe — where the numbering begins at the end of the road nearest to Charing Cross. I get oddly cross with roads that do the opposite.

Back when living at the house before the one we live at now, I asked someone who’d been advertising in one of those free, delivered, local mags to take an alcove cupboard out and replace it with shelves. The guy hadn’t a clue. He just used to hit things and hope. I fired him before he managed to do any structural damage.

I was reminded of him yesterday when correcting a latch that kept popping open. The fitter might well have been my hopeless man. This was an outward-opening where the bolt keep is just a hole in the frame with a metal plate around it. I did the usual thing which is to find the keep’s binding side and move the plate. Except it still wouldn’t engage. It turned out that the plate (known as a”strike plate”) was from a completely different lock and too small for this bolt. The door would never ever have been properly shut – just sticking in the frame a tiny bit. My customer only noticed something was wrong when thumping from some work being done to the flat above them sometimes caused their door to pop open!

So when is a carpenter/builder actually a bodger; and is it “bodger” or “botcher”? It seems to me that if you do get a proper carpenter or joiner, you’re in the lucky minority. And I think that bodger is probably too kind as well. As I understand it, a bodger is actually a decent soul: it’s someone who does a good job but with improvised materials. So “botcher” is probably the right term for my nemeses.

Picture the scene … Wannabe business tycoon …

“I really could do with a new set of golf clubs. And the wife (or husband – I have non-sexist indignation) wants a new conservatory. Where can I drum up some business? The old chimney sweeping (property maintenance / building / rag and bone / …) business isn’t doing too well.”

“Hmm, Brenda’s (or Brendan’s) sat at that switchboard all day doing very little for what I have pay them. I know. Let’s put out 200 web pages each pretending to be for a local locksmith business with an 0845 number. Then when people ring in we’ll take the booking and ring around a few of the bodgers whose business cards I’ve collected from the last 20 trade shows, and give the job to them. Course, we’ll have to charge the punter twice the pittance we’ll pay our bodger. And there’ll be times when we can’t get anyone, but what the hell; the punter won’t have our address.”

…

I’m irked at the moment because the internet searches are being swamped more than usual by the Nationals. And we actual local businesses are losing out on calls. And of course, customers are waiting and waiting and wondering why no-one is coming. Or they’re wondering how come they’re £150 poorer, there’s a big hole in their door and they can’t lock it.

What are the things to look out for when getting yourself a new front door?

Well, make sure you get an external quality door and one that has the correct fire rating. This post only addresses single occupancy / family dwellings. Houses of multiple occupancy (HMOs) have extra fire regulations for the landlord, etc. to satisfy. We see plenty of conversions where the flats’ final exit doors are really internal doors.

Get a solid door. It should be heavy! If it’s not heavy , it’s hollow. If it’s not heavy but doesn’t sound hollow, it’s probably got a honeycomb paper fill.

Don’t get a door with pretty panels - glass or wood. You can make it look as though it’s panelled by sticking strips of molding on.

If it’s a solid door it will probably be too heavy for two hinges and will need three. Don’t let your carpenter get away with anything less than a decent quality, properly sized screw in every single hinge hole. I went to yet another door yesterday with fully half the hinge screws missing. Not only will the door sag eventually if the hinges aren’t done properly, it will be easier to kick it in at the hinge side.

If, despite all this, you still end up with a hollow door, ensure the lockblock is on the correct side. The lockblock should be marked. It’s an extra-wide piece of wood that’s thick enough to accept the latch lock and a mortice deadlock. And don’t let your carpenter put the mortice lock where the horizontal crosspiece meets the vertical (the stile). All they are doing is breaking an important joint and weakening the door.

The latch lock will typically go about one third of the way down from the top and the mortice lock about one third of the way up from the bottom. Although there is something to be said for putting the mortice lock in as the upper lock, as it is harder to kick in if it’s up there.

Obviously you want the correct size of door. I was at a door yesterday with a 2 cm gap at the top and 1 cm gaps at both sides!

A solid door that’s correctly sized and thick enough will tend to bang the frame as it shuts, so proper doors have a bevelled edge to deal with this. Naturally the bevel should be on the same side as the lock block. And you want the face with the lesser width to arrive at the frame first when closing.

If anyone thinks of anything else, why not put up a comment and I’ll extend the post.

There’s a lock (maybe that should be “lock”) “manufacturer” about who’s product I may just have posted in the past. While their high end latch is better than Yale’s PBS equivalent (although if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing when you fit it, it too will soon fail), most of the security items that bear their name are very, very poor.

On a communal door, you don’t want a key-operated deadlock. A communal door should (indeed must if it’s being newly appointed) have what’s known as keyless egress. The typical arrangement is to get rid of the key-operated deadlock and put a cylinder-operated deadlock, with a turn on the inside, in its place.

One of this morning’s doors had an ARSE cylinder-operated deadlock. Now I’ve encounted, and had to replace, a few of these over the years. But this one was more special than usual. (“Special” in the charming way the French use it – “Lui, il est special.”) When this one’s turn was turned to unlock to withdraw the bold, if you carried on turning hard in the unlock direction the bolt popped back out again by a few millimetres – just enough to prevent the door opening – and stuck there. Turning neither the key nor the turn could then move the bold in either direction.

If you’re of a nervous, but not petrified, disposition and you’d like to ensure that this condition – known as a half shot bolt – isn’t going to put a ripple in the millpond of your life, then try operating the keys and turns, from both sides, of your deadlock. Try operating them quickly and slowly, and try turning past the normal lock/unlock detent position. If you can get the bolt to emerge part way, get the lock serviced or replaced. (A half-shot bolt can just be pushed back in again; as long as the door is open.)

(Rearrange the letters and remove one of them.)