Secure Door For Your Home
Secure Door For Your Home
If you are like most Canadians, you are concerned about the safety of your home and your community. One particular type of crime that worries Canadians is breaking and entering or burglary. Recent statistics show that burglary accounts for 22 per cent of all property crime.
The How To Lock Out Crime series, jointly prepared by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), will make you more aware of burglary and its dynamics and show you how to minimize the likelihood that this crime will happen to you.
By knowing the conditions favourable to burglars and taking steps to eliminate those conditions, you can greatly reduce the chances that your home will be burgled. Being proactive and implementing a well-thought-out plan can:
- significantly reduce the opportunity for a crime to be committed
- minimize the consequences—both personal and property damages—if a crime does occur.
More than locks
Securing your doors against burglars takes more than good locks. A well-designed doorway is a miniature security system in which door, frame and hardware —the locks, hinges and fasteners—work together. The system as a whole is only as strong as its weakest part.
This fact sheet conforms to the 2005 National Building Code, which is used as a model for most provincial and municipal building regulations. Recommendations based on Code requirements are shown in italics, like this. Non-mandatory recommendations are in regular type. Check with your municipality’s building department to see if there are other requirements.
Remember—no security system is 100 per cent effective. The methods outlined here will not always discourage a professional burglar from breaking into your home. But they will, in most instances, persuade amateurs—who are by far the most frequent offenders—to look for an easier target.
Exterior doors
Burglar-resistant doors should be installed at all exterior entrances to the dwelling and at the entrance leading from the garage into the house. Burglar-resistant doors are usually made of wood or metal.
Wood doors should be of solid-core or rail-and-stile construction at least 45 mm (1 1/4 in.) in overall thickness. Since the panel portions of the rail-andstile doors are the weakest parts, they should not exceed half of the door area and should be at least 19 mm (3/4 in.) thick at the thinnest part.
Burglar-resistant doors should meet the Canadian General Standards Board’s standard for insulated steel doors (CAN/CGSB 82.5M) if made of steel, or the Canadian Standards Association’s standard for wood flush doors (CAN/CSA 0132.2-M) if made of wood.
The CSA standard for wood flush doors requires the doors to be marked to show that they are exterior grade and meet the standard.
Plank doors are similar to solid-core wooden doors but come without a facing. Homeowners should be wary of any door with an internal cedar frame, which tends to split along the grain when pressure is applied at the lock.
Ordinary glass in doors and in sidelights—the glass panels on one or both sides of the door —can easily be broken to gain access to the door lock. Replace ordinary glass with laminated glass, wired glass or burglar-resistant acrylic or polycarbonate plastic.
Tempered glass, while stronger than ordinary glass, can be easily shattered by concentrated impact and offers little challenge to forced entry. Fitting a protective metal mesh or grille over the glass, or installing an alarm that will sound if the glass is broken are other protection methods.
Mail slots built into the door should be no larger than 12 mm X 150 mm (1/2 in. X 6 in.) and should not be located within 450 mm (18 in.) of a lock. If the slot is larger, install a metal box or deflecting baffle behind the slot to restrict access through it to the door hardware.
Door frames
Doors are hung in a frame consisting of two vertical members (jambs) and one horizontal member (head). This frame is supported by the structural framing or studs. A door should fit snugly into the frame with not more than a 3 mm (1/8 in.) clearance on either side and at the top, and not more than 6 mm (1/4 in.) at the bottom.
Metal strike plates can be incorporated into the door jamb, where the door latch and deadbolt meet the jamb. This will prevent an intruder from wedging a crowbar between the door and frame and crushing the frame to free the bolt.
Metal frames for exterior doors must incorporate a thermal break that will prevent the metal from conducting heat away from the home’s interior.
To resist spreading under force, the space between the door jambs and the adjacent studs on each side of the door must be filled with blocking at lock height. If the space is small, this can be done using shims. Place shims or blocking at the top and bottom hinges to strengthen the assembly. Sidelights will seriously weaken the frame. To reinforce the frame, remove the inside trim between the door and sidelight and fasten a length of flat steel 25 mm (1 in.) wide to the wood of the frame. For best effect, the metal brace should extend the full height of the door frame and be held in place with long screws at 300 mm (12 in.) intervals.
Contact your REALTOR at Coldwell Banker Vantage Realty for more tips and advice on your home safety.
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