My neighborhood used to be a relatively safe place to live. I wouldn't go so far as to say that people left their doors unlocked all night or left their keys in their cars, but crime wasn't something we had to worry about on a daily basis.
Recently, however, there has been a rash of burglaries and break-ins in the immediate area. I'm usually not the kind of person to panic unnecessarily, but I don't want to take any chances on safety -- especially with my children in the house. Therefore, I'm looking to make my home as secure as possible, and I'm going to start by adding patio door locks to my sliding glass doors.
I have a bi-level deck, which means I need two sets of patio door locks. Right now, the only thing preventing would-be intruders from entering my home is the standard latch lock that most sliding doors come with. But from what I've read, this type of lock is easy to disengage, and simply isn't enough of a safeguard against break-ins. I need far more sophisticated patio door locks in order to protect my family.
I went out to one of those big-box home improvement stores to check out the patio door locks they had in stock. I was extremely disappointed by their limited selection, but was at least able to see first-hand how some of the security devices worked. I got a better idea of what I wanted to buy for my own house, and then returned home to check some online hardware stores.
As I expected, these online stores carried a far greater selection of patio door locks for me to choose from. I looked over the features of the most popular devices, such as security bars, pins, and keyed latches, and compared the benefits of each type. After spending a couple of hours examining different products from different websites, I finally decided to purchase a couple of keyed patio door locks that can't be forced open and that prevent the doors from being lifted off their tracks.
My new patio door locks combined with the security alarm that I already have in place should be sufficient to protect my family from any random break-in attempts, as most burglars don't want to deal with these things at all.
Now I'll definitely sleep easier at night knowing that all of my sliding doors are as secure as they can be!
Summary:
If you have patio doors in your place, you better have a secure way of locking them to prevent breakins and other types of criminal activity. You need to find locks which can't be forced open and also will not let the doors be taken off track. One of the cheapest ways to secure these types of doors is to purchase or find a piece of wood that is the length of the door and place it in the track.
