Door security

'The term door security' may refer to any of a range of measures used to strengthen doors against door breaching, Ram-raiding and lock picking, and prevent crimes such as burglary and home invasions. Door security is used in commercial and government buildings, as well as in residential settings.

Some strengthened doors function as fire doors to prevent or inhibit the spread of fire.

Security devices

Alarms

Alarms — designed to warn of burglaries.

Locks

Reinforcement

Other methods

Residential security

Common residential doors

The following are the types of doors typically used in residential applications: solid wood door, panel doors (hollow and solid core), metal skinned wood-edged doors and metal edge-wrapped doors. Typically, door frames are solid wood. Residential doors also frequently contain wood.

Security tests by Consumer Reports Magazine in the 1990s found that many residential doors fail or delaminate when force is applied to them. Solid wood doors withstood more force than the very common metal skinned wood-edged doors used in newer construction. A broad range door manufacturer, Premdor (now Masonite) once stated in one of its 1990s brochures entitled "Premdor Entry Systems" page 6 that "The results of tests were overwhelming, Steel edged doors outperform wood-edged doors by a ratio of 7 to 1. When you consider the practically two-thirds of all illegal entries were made through doors... One hit of 100 lb [lbf] strike force broke the wood-edged stile and opened the door. To actually open the steel-edged door required 7 strikes of 100 lb pressure [force]." Most door manufactures offer a number of different types of doors with varying levels of strength.

Consumer Reports Magazine also reported in its test results that door frames often split with little force applied and lower quality deadbolts simply failed when force was applied to the door.

The Chula Vista Residential Burglary Reduction Project which studied over 1,000 incidents found that "methods found to have relatively low effectiveness included: sliding glass door braces, such as wooden dowels, as opposed to sliding door channel or pin locks; deadbolts installed in the front door only; and outdoor lights on dusk-to-dawn timers".[3]

Burglary tactics

The Chula Vista Residential Burglary-Reduction Project yielded the following findings: "From victim interviews, we learned that in 87% of the break-ins that occurred when intruders defeated locked doors with tools such as screwdrivers or crowbars, the burglars targeted "the one door that had no deadbolt lock ... not one burglar attempted to break a double-pane window during the course of successful or attempted burglary."[3]

See also

References

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