How Secure Is Your Front Door?

In the vast majority of house break-ins, criminals access the property via the doors or through the windows. Over 60% of burglars use forced entry of some kind. Around 30 percent of others happen because the home owners leave doors or windows open or unlocked. The only advice for the latter is to be extra attentive and make sure you do your security checks each time before bed, or when you leave the property. Even a fortress is useless against intruders when the drawbridge is down and the gates are open. A lot of forced entries don’t take much force either, not if the doors, frames or locks are weak. In this piece we take a look at how to burglar-proof your front door. A few simple steps and you can secure your property better and make your home safer for you and your loved ones.^[1]

This video looks at common problems with front doors, and three ways you can improve the security of the doors you already have:

 

 

The four main areas that cause problems for door security include:

1. Door frames (weak or substandard)
2. The wrong type of doors
3. The wrong type of door locks and other hardware
4. No peep hole (opening doors can allow quick access for any determined criminal)

The Problem with Door Frames

Quite often, the security issues are not always with the door so much, or even its hardware. Both these things can pose problems of course, but they’re not the only weaknesses. Many front door vulnerabilities lie in the weakness of the actual door frames. If you haven’t looked at your own frames, or don’t know what to look for, get a professional to check your door security for you. It may surprise you just how vulnerable your home is. You might also discover how secure you are. The point is this: if you don’t know, it’s better to find out before a break in occurs, not after one happens.

Other considerations worth checking include:

• If necessary, replace the door’s deadbolt strike-plate
• Reinforce the door and its door-jamb (the two vertical parts of the doorframe)
• Look at the door hinges and secure or replace them if needed
• Swap a cheap hollow core type door for a more solid metal or wooden option
• Add an additional layer of visible security and/or lighting to deter burglars.^[2]

Resources

1. http://www.wikihow.com/Burglarproof-Your-Doors
2. http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/how-to-secure-monitor-your-front-door-193987