In our trilogy about the practicality of homes I want to lock some things down. It’s time to talk about the locks.
There used to be a time when a lock indicated that no-one was available. An open lock meant someone was home or stuff available (e.g. from a shed). And people used that as a permission to pop in for a chat or to borrow something. Back in the far north people many times had a broom or something at their entrace (to sweep away the snow, fallen leaves, etc). That was left leaning on the door to show it doesn’t pay knock on the door as no-one’s there to answer the call. There wasn’t that much need to secure and protect things back then. Especially when majority of people had only what they needed, not any excess.
Secure keys, double deadbolts, added locks, security shields, barriers or steel mesh screens, alarm systems. That’s the trend today. The need varies but the tools are the same.
To me it’s kind of funny that the house has been built to be secure against intruders. Access through the windows requires breaking the screens (and I can testify they are). Access through the doors is supposed to be very hard, too. Though here we hit the weak link: the locks. We also find a major fire safety concern there, too.
The entrances (front doors) are normally hinged and have a screen door in front (check any American movie presenting an old house to see examples). The screen is usually thin plastic mesh to keep the insects out (a very handy solution to the problem). Many screen doors also have metal barriers to prevent access through the door. The other doors (patio, backyard) are normally sliding with a separate sliding screen door.
To me it seems that the locks are rather weak. Without specifically testing them I doubt how much brute force they might survive. Possibly not a lot. In this new house one of the locks actually got stuck and was replaced. I watched a builder trying to remove it for replacement. That didn’t take much: a little pull with thongs, some twisting sideways, and voilà he pulled the pieces out. Amazing how easy it was to break the lock! To my comment that it probably isn’t the lock to use in a safe, he couldn’t but laugh. “No, certainly not…”
Some of the internal locks, too, are rather weak. After just a few years they start to be wobbly. Though, at the same time, there are also good durable locks. It’s just the tendency of going for the cheap options which mars the long-term enjoyment.
One feature in the locks has been puzzling us since the start and we’ve found the feature to be present apparently in all houses.In our new house we finally realised the reason for this odd feature. The screen doors normally have a small lever or switch in the lock (indoors) to what we thought would lock it. And yes, it does prevent you from using the handle so effectively the door is locked. But, the odd factor, when you use the key to lock it, you can’t open the lock from the lever / switch. To me this presents a potential risk if you need to escape the house: There’s no way you can open the door nor break out! It is backlocked! In reality, the switch only disables the handle but doesn’t lock the mechanism. The key, on the other hand, locks the whole thing and you can open it only with a key. This occured to us as the screen doors in the new house have additional latches both at the upper and lower edges of the door to secure it. The key opens & closes them, the switch doesn’t affect them at all. To us this means that if someone’s home we don’t lock the doors when going out. Instead, the one staying home, will come to the door to disable the handle. Not precisely very safe or convenient but the nature of the beast.
Somehow I miss the good old Assa Abloy locks which were always locked from the outside (without any additional actions) but could always be opened from inside without any keys or so. The latch was also shaped so that you can simply push the door closed. Rather handy if you have your hands full of bags, kids, or whatever. They were really set-and-forget locks as the only time you needed to pay any attention to them was when coming home: where’s the key…
Just thinking aloud to the end: some car models have “keyless” locks which sense when the electronic key is nearby. That would be cool, too, at home. Say, the house would automatically lock itself when all the keys are taken out and likewise open when a key is approaching. This could also include added security features to hinder unauthorised access. Perhaps an iris scan, fingerprints or voice recognition for extra validation that the key is in the right hands. Only a couple of question to resolve and we’ll be there: how old a child needs to be to be reliably recognised and what happens when people age and change, the system needs to be made fool-proof and flawless (so it can’t operate in Microsoft environment nor developed with traditional application development methods), and how to survive power outages? When these little details are attended to, let’s introduce the Generation One keyless locks.
