What kind of metal door to buy for an apartment: locks, thickness, security technologies

Recommendation points

• Types of doors and the concept of burglary resistance
• Opening systems
• Protection against removal and extrusion
• Locks and their reliability
• Cover plates and armor plates
• Special and additional fittings

For an apartment, it is the front door that determines how applicable the concept of an “impregnable fortress” is. Today we offer you an overview of the basic rules for choosing an entrance door, lock and all the necessary fittings to ensure practical use and safety..

Types of doors and the concept of burglary resistance

How well a door protects your home from unwanted intrusion depends on several factors. The first and most obvious is how difficult it is to destroy the door leaf itself in order to gain access to the opening mechanisms or just inside the apartment. Secondary factors relate to fittings: hinges, locks, larvae and all other functional elements.

Burglary resistance of a door is determined by the time it takes to open it with or without a special tool. This concept is very relative and depends not only on the reliability of the door block, but also on the professional training of the person conducting the break-in..

Doors made of thin sheet iron with honeycomb filling are considered the least reliable. They have good thermal and sound insulation, but using a screwdriver with a core drill, drilling a hole, sticking your hand in and unlocking the apartment from the inside is a matter of one minute..

The best indicators of burglary resistance are steel doors, often and mistakenly called armored. The optimum thickness of the steel sheet is from 2.5 mm, it is desirable to have trap edges or special hardened inserts that prevent drilling. In general, the task of the manufacturer of the door block is to force the attacker to abandon the destruction of the door block and focus on breaking locks or other accessories, the determination of burglary resistance of which is subject to more stringent rules..

Opening systems

The first component of the front door, which needs to be given special attention, is considered to be a system that ensures the door is kept closed. Let us explain with the simplest example: in the most ordinary door, the bolts (pins) of the lock serve as the unlocking system.

There are also more complex schemes, which, due to complex mechanics, transfer force to numerous crossbars located along the entire contour of the door. Most of the additional crossbars are vertical and they are located on the left and right edges of the canvas, moving up and down. More complex and expensive mechanics allow one or more horizontal pins, for example, to duplicate a lock bolt on the hinge side.

What tricks can provide burglar resistance of the unlocking system? Firstly, these are rotatable crossbars, which simply cannot be cut even with an electric tool. Secondly, this is a special security system that does not allow the mechanism to be set in motion by hand, opening part of the door leaf. When trying to destroy the mechanics, the bolts will simply fall and permanently block the door block. If the unlocking system is well secured, burglary can only be carried out through the lock.

Protection against removal and extrusion

Full-loop locking is mainly used to prevent the door from being removed from the hinges or being wrung out. There are other, less expensive options that function for the same purpose..

The first type of anti-spin protection is concealed hinges. If the canvas is made entirely of steel, gaining access to the hinges will be another task. Especially if their location cannot be determined by their appearance.

The second type includes external hinges with tungsten carbide pins. It will definitely not work to knock out or cut such a canopy without noise, and even with a powerful power tool, it will take a lot of time.

The third type of protection against extrusion can be called the most accessible for the layman. These are special hinges with pins and mating holes, such as Zi-IKON. The best part is that almost any door can be equipped with such fittings even without replacing the hinges..

Locks and their reliability

All of the above methods of protection are designed to exclude other methods of breaking and make the lock the only “vulnerable” point of the door. The complex of these measures should be complex and complete exactly to the extent that you can afford a complex and burglar-proof lock. But burglary resistance and, accordingly, the cost of the castle should be chosen depending on the value of the property stored in the apartment.

There are two important digressions to make here:

1. First: it makes sense to enhance the security of the door only if penetration by other means, for example, through windows or technical channels of the building, is completely excluded..
2. And second: the increased security of the door can play a cruel joke in emergency situations or in case of loss of keys. To prevent EMERCOM employees from opening the apartment through the wall, ensure that a spare set of keys is stored in a remote cache.

But back to the castles. In reality, none of them provide absolute protection, but the high complexity of the break-in can cause a thief to abandon the attempt to break through. Lever locks are considered the most resistant to burglary. To be more precise, they require a lot of time and preliminary preparations, or stealing the key and making a duplicate from the impression.

English maggots are the least reliable, but their presence will cause burglars to dissipate forces and spend extra time. Especially if the larva cannot be opened by physical destruction due to special overlays, and a set of standard master keys turns out to be useless due to a two-row self-resetting ball mechanism.

Please note that only one lock can control the unlocking system and this must be the most reliable one installed. It makes sense to install the rest only if hidden protection against spinning is provided. Otherwise, it is easier to break the main lock, remove the crossbars around the perimeter and remove the door from the hinges.

Cover plates and armor plates

Various kinds of lining, both for the entire door and for the locks, give a significant increase in burglary resistance. Overlays serve two important functions.

First, they hide the design features of the door block, the location of the hinges, welding traces of hidden reinforcing ribs, the manufacturer and type of locks, as well as other details..

The second is to provide additional protection against drilling or other damage to the locks, which is especially important for English larvae. The armored pad will not allow you to screw a self-tapping screw into the larva or break it by grabbing the protruding edge. The overlay on the lever lock will not allow you to drill a hole for the second master key, and without this it will be very, very difficult to break into.

When choosing overlays, pay attention to the type of attachment and material. The device of the armored pad for the lock should not allow it to be torn off or twisted with a pipe wrench. It is also desirable that the overall decorative strip does not have a point attachment, but is glued to the steel sheet over the entire area. By the way, in the highest quality doors, a composite layer containing an abrasive material can be glued under the lining, which contributes to the rapid dullness of drills and crowns.

Special and additional fittings

The actions described above are enough to divert the attention of intruders from your home. Do not forget that the apartment becomes the target of a thief mainly due to the carelessness of the owners and keep in mind that there are still many more easily accessible targets in addition to you. However, if you are used to keeping all your savings at home, there are a few more methods to provide additional protection..

The most effective is to think over your own scheme for locking the door, which is not known to anyone else and is in no way determined by external signs. This includes the unlocking system lock (invisible lock), operated by a remote control. An analogue of such an expensive addition can be an Arduino servo controlled via a wireless network that does not broadcast its name..

Electronics in general provides very great opportunities for protecting housing from burglary. Vibration sensors can be installed on the door to trigger the security alarm when trying to drill a lock or cut off hinges. However, the most tricky addition will be a system that simulates noise or the presence of the owners if unclear manipulations occur with the door block..