Author: hoverfishSimon

As the temperature changes UPVC doors can become difficult to lock/unlock. If it needs excessive force to lift the handle or turn the key then the door needs adjust or the mechanism inside can fail completely. If it fails in the locked position it can be difficult to fix. It’s far cheaper to adjust the door prior to the mechanism breaking.

If the door does become stuck open or closed, give us a ring and see if we can fix it for you.

I was asked to do lock changes on a vacant shop. It hadn’t been entered in about 18 months and was covered in dust and grime.  There were 2 British Standard 5 lever mortice locks on the door.

Both mortice locks were non destructively opened and removed. Interestingly (to me at least) they had both been previously drilled open and not replaced. There was still the hole in the hardplate. Whichever locksmith did it had just poorly replaced the levers inside. Admittedly they’d drilled the hole perfectly.

Normally levers in this model lock are a mix of hi/low lift, they’d certainly be different from each other.  When we opened the top locks all the levers were identical which is completely wrong.

It might be tempting after a hard day at work to drop your keys on the nearest table then go and relax. Don’t! The simplest way to steal your car or burgle your house is to fish keys out of the letterbox. Keep them out of sight. Keep them out of reach of rods and wires.

This poor Ford Fiesta was stolen/recovered. The keys had been tossed by the thief. I’m not sure if the thief or the recovery truck driver smashed the window. We were called to make a replacement transponder key so the rightful owners could drive it home from the pound. We also erased the missing key so that it can’t be used to steal the car again.

Here is the proximity reader for a Paxton Switch2 access control system we installed recently.  They have many other styles of reader/keypads available.

Switch2 is more suitable for external use than the Compact system. This is because the Switch2 control unit is mounted inside the building, rather than being in the reader/keypad itself as in the Compact. Therefore Compact systems are normally only fitted internally.

If you need audit-trail, time-sheets, anti-passback etc, then look at the Paxton Net2 or 10 systems

Here is an old, badly fitting UPVC door.  It was sagging badly on its hinges and hitting the frame so it wouldn’t close. The hinges were non adjustable, so the the only option was to remove the glass and repack the door panels.  By packing the panels on the diagonal (heel – toeing) it shifts the door back into square with     the frame.

Composite and aluminium doors tend not to sag. If these doors are hitting the frame it’s normally because the hinges have dropped, they weren’t fitted correctly to begin with, or the house itself has settled.

If a UPVC door is not adjusted it frequently leads to the multipoint mechanism breaking. That can leave the door jammed shut or you can’t lock it. That can be much more expensive than getting the door correctly aligned.

I was asked to do a lock change on a commercial premises. It was obvious that a lock had been drilled at some point in the past. Underneath the escutcheon the door was a right mess.

There is sometimes a need to drill a lock if it is broken and there’s no other way to open it, but it shouldn’t look like this mess.

A drilled lock should be replaced with a new lock (otherwise the hole in the hardplate will be a weakness in security). The hole in the door should then be neatly filled and covered.  In a later post I’ll show you another lock that’s been drilled (not by me) and badly repaired.

This 19th century lock is off a Forest of Dean historic church.  It was made by John Moreton & Son, dating from the late 1800s. It had its only key stolen and a replacement was needed. A cast iron blank was initially shaped on a grinder. It was then hand filed to pass the centre warding.