In this video, we go into detail on how to secure a sliding glass door.
We run into these quite a bit in Phoenix, and we find it’s one of our client’s top security concerns. It’s clearly a large, breakable sheet of glass. But as we’ve mentioned before, most criminals aren’t going to break glass as their first method of entry. Instead, they’ll try to force or pry the door open using either brute strength or a pry bar.
There are only two ways the door can move. Up, and horizontally along the track. If the door is lifted vertically with a pry bar, sometimes the entire door can be removed from the track and forced outward. Horizontally, the door can be forced hard enough to where the locking device breaks, allowing the door to be opened.
We prevent lifting by installing a blocking material in the upper track so the door has just enough clearance to open smoothly, but not too much where it can be lifted. To prevent horizontal movement, we install a custom-sized piece of doweling with a handle to allow easy removal. For those who do not want doweling, we have a variety of auxillary locks that can be installed at a more accessible level.
You may choose to install security film to prevent breaking of the glass. This will make it more difficult to simply break the glass and walk through the door, if a criminal is brazen enough to do that.
In the video below, we also bring attention to a security vulnerability that we found at our old house where the sliding glass door could be bumped open with our hip. The lock was defective and I’ve tried to replicate this at client’s homes but have only found a few other doors with this same issue. Either way, it’s good to have a secondary locking mechanism such as doweling or something resembling a hook and loop.
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