Locksmithing and Security

I’ve stopped using ERA products. Their high-end nightlatch isn’t too bad, however. It does have one major design fault, though.

The bevel on the latchbolt is the wrong shape. Because it’s a latch, i.e. it locks as you pull the door to, one side of the latchbolt is sloped. Well on this latch it’s not sloped enough. Instead of being smoothly pushed in as the door is shut, the latchbolt resists being pushed in. The result is that gradually, the lock is hammered off the door.

This can be compounded if an inexperienced carpenter or locksmith has not secured the lock to the door with screws placed in the outermost fixing holes of the lock, but instead has used the innermost holes that ERA, also inexplicably, provide.

So if you recognize that you have this lock, once a month you should put a smear of heavy grease — car grease will do nicely — on the bevel of the lock’s bolt where it hits the keep’s strike. The lock will be on the door and the keep will be on the frame (unless your fitter was really incompetent). In the picture above, the bolt is at the left and the flat is facing us; the bevel is behind. The extra little dingus sticking out of the lock on the left is the anti-slip device that stops the commonest way of opening a latched front door without a key.

I’ve just returned from a visit to a door that’s five years old and is going to have to be replaced.

So, it’s time for my regular plea to any of you chosing a door. Although, pricewise, a uPVC (or aluminium) door and frame with a multi-point lock strip (MPL) might initially seem a good idea, it will go wrong and sure as eggs are eggs, replacments for your MPL strip will no longer be available. And, no, you can’t usually replace parts of a strip; it’s all or nothing and anywhere between £60 and £200 in parts costs.

If you have a nice wooden door with a good latch lock and a good deadbolt it will last longer. It can be painted when you get fed up with the colour. When the weasels find a way to defeat your locks you can replace them or augment them with better ones. When the locks eventually wear out you will be able to find replacements rather than having to butcher the door in order to fit a second-best alternative MPL or having to replace the entire door.

If you have a uPVC door you’ll have none of the above flexibility.

Have you ever had to fill in one of those interminable Answers To Questions when selling a property?

If I was buying a property, one of the questions I’d like answered is, “Are there any doors with locks to which no key will be handed over?”

I’ve just been to a job where a new owner was faced with seven doors where there were locks but no keys. Luckily they were all open and were all straightforward locks to rekey.

So, amongst the 1001 things to worry about when buying, I do suggest a one thousand and second worry: that you ask your solicitor to add such a question.

“Snib” is a more correct term for what is often known as the latch button on a latch lock.

A latch lock is the kind that can slam shut behind you, locking you out. Usually when you’ve decided to nip quickly out onto the doorstep in your dressing gown in order to get the milk delivery.

The snib is the little button that locks the latch bolt in the open position, and sometimes in the closed position as well. There are at least two reasons for checking that the snib isn’t loose.

Firstly if you have a dog (or cat?) that has the habit of jumping up and pawing at the locks, then Fido just might manage to activate a loose snib and lock you out.

This has now happened twice to one of my customers. They didn’t believe me the first time and wouldn’t let me change the lock. Now they are believers.

Secondly, if a snib has become loose and the lock is a “nightlatch” style lock on the “dangerous” side of the door (for a Yale 77, 84, 85, 88 or 89, for example, the “dangerous” side is the left as you look from the inside) then slamming the door could cause the snib to drop and lock you out — if down is the locking direction. (When mounted on the other side of the door a dropping snib is dropping towards the open and safe position.)

The bad news is that the internet showed everyone and their aunt how to open your traditional locks.

The other bad news is that an unbelievably idiotic cylinder design became a European standard (the “Euro” profile cylinder).

The good news is that lock manufacturers have been spurred into creating some truly fearsome high-security locks, dealing with lock pickers and earlier idiotic lock designers.

The bad news is that it won’t be any good calling a locksmith to get you in if you’ve lost your keys to one of the next generation of locks. So if you do fit high-security locks give a spare key to a good friend who never goes out and never goes on holiday.

Although you can’t do it with, say, a typical Yale and a Chubb on a front door, it is possible with some combinations to have your latch lock and your deadlock operated by the same key. This is obviously kinder to the pocket or handbag lining.

Personally I wouldn’t do it. There’s a tiny chance that some rare breed of thief having picked one lock will find it easier to pick the other. But the main reason I don’t have my front door that way is that in an emergency I can give a key to, say, a builder but not give both keys.

When can locks be keyed alike? When both locks are cylinder operated, rather than the deadlock being lever operated. This can be relatively inexpensive but is unlikely to be covered by your insurance. When both locks are cylinder operated and expensive, like Banhams in London. Or when both locks are lever operated and expensive like those based on the venerable Chubb 110.

What’s a restricted section? Well it’s not something that THEY do to get you locked away. It’s a key with a profile or shape (i.e. its section) that prevents other locksmiths obtaining key blanks and thus prevents them copying your keys. (It used to be a protected design but now it has to be a patent, so cylinder manufacturers are forever inventing silly gizmos just so that they can patent and protect the key blanks.)

Should you ask for a restricted section? Well, the advantage is that you can stay in control of how many copies of your keys are in existence. This can be particularly important if you are blessed with nannies, cleaners, dog walkers or au-pairs (AKA nannies, cleaners and dog walkers).

However, key copies will cost you more: maybe £9 rather than £3; and possibly considerably more for some famous London locks. And you will have to make sure you don’t lose your registration letter or card. And new occupants will be sticking pins in wax images of you when you neglect to give them the registration on moving out.

And locksmiths can retire or go out of business, so make sure you know about escrow — who really manufactured the restricted section and how you go about getting copies from them.

What can you do about the security of your communal door, particularly if you live in a flat in a converted house? The unfortunate answer is, not much.

The first problem is when there’s an electronic entry system of the cheap kind. The cheap kind puts the release solenoid in the keep which is the bit that goes on the frame. This means that all of the lock manufacturers’ clever devices to stop their latch locks being manipulated open no longer work because the keep is the wrong shape. Some lock manufacturers will supply an appropriate electronic keep but they’re more expensive than the general-purpose ones so they tend not to get fitted. (Ingersoll’s excellent SC71 has an electric keep option, for example.) Another better option, also expensive, is to put the release solenoid in the lock — the part on the door itself. Cisa is one of the best known and well regarded of these. In addition to the cost, however, they are also trickier to fit as far as the wiring is concerned.

The second problem is that most conversions’ front doors have the traditional nightlatch plus mortice deadlock. It’s dangerous and inconvenient to use the deadlock (you really don’t want to find yourself trapped in the hallway behind a locked front door and with the deadlock’s key the other side of the fire), so only the latch is used.

Thirdly, the communal door will get twice as much use but much less care and attention, so it will tend to fall apart.

Well you have to summon up the willpower (and the landord) to make the communal door at least a little bit of a challenge to the thief. Get any poor woodwork properly repaired by a competent carpenter. Get the keeps and locks securely attached and consider a London bar to further strengthen the keeps. And get a cowl or a mailguard bag over your letterslot.

What else can you do? One of the most important things is a PIR-activated porch light that is bright and directed, and that comes on when someone is about half-way up the garden path. And if there are tall hedges hiding the doorway from the road, get them trimmed.

You can consider replacing the old lever mortice deadlock with a cylinder-operated mortice deadlock where the cylinder has a thumbturn on the inside. Then there should be no chance that someone will get locked in. However, there will still be some dwellers who can’t be bothered to put the key in and lock the door when they go out.

So, whilst you should obviously do your best with the communal door, you should focus even more of your attention on your flat door. If you check your insurance policy (and you should), you may find that it doesn’t even mention the communal door; it will probably be talking about your flat door.

So despite your best efforts, thieves may well get into the hallway — coming in on someone’s heels — taking advantage of someone who didn’t bother to set the deadlock — and once the’re inside and out of sight they can pretty much take their time and make plenty of noise with impunity.

What do you do if there are windows at the back of your property — which must apply to just about everybody except non-ground-floor flat dwellers?

You can consider grilles. I don’t like the huge concertina grilles very much. They look overpowering even when drawn back; and they can trap fingers. Strap grilles are quite good; they’re fairly unobtrusive.

For a general increase in security at the rear once you fitted good locks, the next thing to sort out is light. Obviously there are daytime break-ins so it’s not an absolute. But it’s a good deterrent when a thief raising its ugly head over the fence/wall/trellis suddenly activates a nice powerful light.

But do have them infra-red activated, do adjust them for sensitivity and for daylight level, do put them up high and do get them with a metal grille over the front.

It’s not a good idea to leave keys in lever locks. I remember back when I was a student, in a shared house, and responsible for my own security for the first time, assuming that as long as there wasn’t a gap under the door big enough for the pencil and sheet of newspaper trick, that leaving the key in the back door would make it more difficult to pick open. (We are talking about a lever lock here — where the key disappears inside a traditional keyhole.)

Little did I know. Firstly, almost no thieves pick locks — certainly not those of student hovels just around the corner from the Coronation Street set in Salford — they just break the door or the frame. Secondly, it actually makes it easier for the thief who knows what he or she is doing (so still pretty rare) to open the lock.

Profile cylinder locks are different, however. As long as there’s no letter-slot — and surely no-one these days is going to leave a key anywhere near a letter-slot — a key left in the inside keyway of a keyed-both-sides profile cylinder (of the kind usually found on uPVC doors) makes it much more difficult to pick open the lock. Or for that matter, even to open the lock normally. In fact it’s a prime cause of people becoming locked out.