How to Secure a Door to Prevent Theft

Video Transcript

"On behalf of expertvillage.com, I am Jim Koch and today we are talking about a locksmith would access to your house when you've locked your keys in or lost your keys. We are going to talk a little bit about security and some of the things you can do to make it a little tougher for a thief to get in your house. In this case, this is the door that leads from the garage to the house. You'll see there's no deadbolt. The nice thing is that the door frame is built properly. The drawback is as with any lock if you don't lock it, it doesn't do you much good. That is one of the things I can stress the most. When I come to a house that somebody has locked their keys in the house, I can almost find a window that is a cracked, a door that is open or some way of entry without even picking a lock. One of the common things I find in houses when I come to unlock them is the garage. This garage door has an opener and it will hold the door to a certain extent but if you don't use this latch or don't have one of these latches, nothing else is going to help and this is just a quick easy way for someone to get in. What you need to do is just step your foot on the bottom of the door, push that latch closed and if you are going to be gone for long periods of time like you are going on vacatoin, most latches have a hole and you can actually put a padlock through it too. Here's an example of a door that is nearly perfectly set up. You've got a door handle with a key, you've got a deadbolt and the door frame itself is actually recessed in so that you can't get a credit card in behind here. A couple of things that I did notice about this door. One, this lock set up properly, installed properly but the deadbolt you will see is actually upside down. This causes a problem with the springs. Eventually taht will cause a weakness in the springs and the lock will fail because it is hanging upside down and you don't have gravity in your favor. Another security issue that I see with this door is this window. This is a really quick easy way for a thief to get in and actually a thief loves to see these because he walks up, throws a rock through this window and reaches in and unlocks the door and away you go. "