With so many doors out there not thick enough to fit a mortice lock, what do you the consumer have to keep that door secure?
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So, what choices do we have for doors that are to thin to accept a mortice lock?
Most external doors, like your front and back doors would be normally have a thickness of 44 mm, internal doors are normally 38 mm. If your renovating or building a house try and make all your internal doors 44 mm, it helps with acoustics as well as insulation, but most important, you will have a wide variety of choice when it comes to door furniture and locks.
Most mortice locks other than some of these less than robust products coming in from the far east will have a face plate of 25 mm, and a case thickness around 16 to 18 mm. These measurements over the years have standardised for a standard external door 44mm thick door. But when you try to fit these on an internal door, there is not normally any meat left in the door once you have cut away all the timber to fit the lock. This leaves us with the sad fact that internal doors locks and latches have a lot to be desired. When it comes to even thinner doors like ledge and brace doors the options are even less apparent.
With some new products coming on the market here are a few options that may help you.
Rim Dead Locks
In the past all you had where Rim dead locks, but know we have a few newer options
Euro Rim Lock, Fits of the back of the door, Bolted or screwed on, It uses a euro cylinder, (we would recommend our LocksOnline EPS cylinders) depending in the thickness of the door the size of the cylinder would suite. These locks are double throw, therefore, turning the key twice will throw the bolt even further.
There are also bolt locks, promoted as for use with locking garage doors, but in fact will work on any door, these bolts have a massive 2 inches of bolt throw, Ideal when you want that extra bit of security. The unique concept of using a cruciform keys allows the key to be rotated which in turn allows this 2 inch bolt throw.
Obviously the locks shown above are not going to look that pretty on your internal doors to your house, but on you back gate to your garden, your ledge and brace shed doors, garage doors all used to only ever have a simple rim lock fitted, off course you may want to still fit one of these, of only to use the latch function, but with more and more crime now attacking sheds and garages, upgrading doors may not be the considered choice, but at least you can upgrade the security on these doors.
Written by Darrel Walters
Head of the tech department.
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