"Max" wrote in message
...

Bingo!! Just the sort of info I was seeking. Robert, you are a treasure.

Sometimes a guy comes here looking for advice when he has already made
up...well somewhere between 50 and 90 percent...of his mind but would
really like some confirmation.
My many thanks,

Max

That was a particularly useful response, wasn't it?

I saw a video years ago called B and E A to Z, all about how to get into
places you don't have a key for. What an eye-opener, it showed most
residential locks to be a complete joke so far as even a slightly
experienced burglar is concerned. In addition a series of businesses I
worked for were burglarized and that was highly educational as well--a
steel-clad door barred from the inside doesn't matter much when they pry off
a vent cover into the phone/electrical room and then cut through the wall
with a battery-powered saw.

The thing about burglars is they look at a locked door in a totally
different way than a law-abiding citizen. If you don't have a key you think
you can't open that door, but a burglar thinks of the five ways he knows to
open that door without a key. One of the simplest is to cut a chunk out of
the door frame around the bolt so the door can be opened still locked with
the bolt uselessly still in place--a hammer and chisel or a reciprocating
saw renders even the best deadbolt pointless in moments if the door frame is
that easy to get through.

As others have suggested whether or not the lock is pick-resistant is of
less importance than how well the door and windows resist simple brute-force
methods since you're far more likely to encounter a meth-head with a pry-bar
than a cat-burglar with safe-cracking experience. In that regard your alarm
is already your best defense, as even a meth-head will see the alarm sign
and keep on going.