Front entrances are possibly the single most important maintenance areas of home security. There’s many approaches to take to help improve front door security, but it’s important to be both selective and focused, in order to allow you the maximized concentrated security results. Here’s a guide to the best front door security improvement methods, as prepared by the experts at Golden Locksmith.
Lock Upgrades
If you’ve read our blog before, you should already know the level of emphasis that we place on lock upgrades as an essential aspect of security enforcement. Make sure that you’re using a front door lock that protects against bumping, drilling, blunt force, and other entry methods. Assess the security of your existing locks – as well as its handle or keyed knob – and if it doesn’t have one, consider outfitting it with a strong deadbolt.
Security Screens
We recommend layers of security – this can be accomplished by installing a perforated metal barrier, a security screen, behind your door. Outfit it with additional locks and set it to open up towards the point of ingress, so that kicking attacks on the door are less likely to work. The perforations allow you to see outside without putting yourself at any risk of harm – with a much greater range of site than a keyhole. High quality security screens allow you to improve your defense, providing you the opportunity to install more locks.
The Door Itself
Make sure that your exterior door has a iron or steel solid core that provides much better strength than simple hardwood. You can fortify your door with locks all you want, but if it’s a weak door, it simply won’t matter when strong violent attacks are levied against it. As a general rule, exterior doors should NEVER have hollow cores.
Lock Hardware Protection
You want to protect your lock hardware including hinges by installing metal slipcovers over them. The ycan be screwed onto the door, adding a layer of hard material over the locks and preventing the door to fracture around any potential holes that may weaken it. Hardware can be very strong, but it certainly can’t hurt your security to install a metal slipcover that helps reinforce any potential weaknesses in the hardware.
Lengthen Screws
This easy security fix involves replacing short 3 quarter inch screws with deep 3 inch screws that help secure the door and the door hardware much deeper into the material than the simple trim/surface of the door. Short screws provide the possibility of tearing off door hardware with enough strength, but if the door, strike plate, and hinges are set firmly in place, you can be sure that your infrastructure is protected from kicking attacks.
Glass Reinforcement
We recommend either placing closely-set-together bars over glass – which is not a popular choice due to it’s claustrophobic aesthetic effects – or, at very least, installing a glass security window film over all windows that can help protect you from entry methods that attempt to break through the glass of your home. They are not completely smash proof, but certainly help make it much harder to shatter any glass.