The glass window in my solid-wood door was broken and the thief was
able to reach in and open the deadbolt. I'm planning to install a 1/2"
thick lexan sheet with L-shaped stainless steel brackets in the four
corners, caulk the gaps and cover the edges with fir stops. The
brackets will be attached to the door with wood screws and to the
plastic with machine screws and the brackets will be on the inside of
the door. Any suggestions, comments?
KK

(KublaiKhan) writes:

The glass window in my solid-wood door was broken and the thief was
able to reach in and open the deadbolt. I'm planning to install a 1/2"
thick lexan sheet with L-shaped stainless steel brackets in the four
corners, caulk the gaps and cover the edges with fir stops. The
brackets will be attached to the door with wood screws and to the
plastic with machine screws and the brackets will be on the inside of
the door. Any suggestions, comments?

Easier (if not cheaper) to swap out the deadbolt with one that's keyed on both
sides. That's what I did with my exterior doors that have enough glass for a
thief to be able to reach the lock after smashing glass.

Just make sure you keep the key in a convenient place.

Best,

Marc

Do you have a real nice house? My neighbor did that and they cut it with
a propane torch. Deadbolts keyed both sides, unpickable Medico.

"MrAoD" wrote in message
...
(KublaiKhan) writes:

The glass window in my solid-wood door was broken and the thief was
able to reach in and open the deadbolt. I'm planning to install a 1/2"
thick lexan sheet with L-shaped stainless steel brackets in the four
corners, caulk the gaps and cover the edges with fir stops. The
brackets will be attached to the door with wood screws and to the
plastic with machine screws and the brackets will be on the inside of
the door. Any suggestions, comments?

Easier (if not cheaper) to swap out the deadbolt with one that's keyed on
both
sides. That's what I did with my exterior doors that have enough glass
for a
thief to be able to reach the lock after smashing glass.

Just make sure you keep the key in a convenient place.

Bad idea, and against fire code in many areas, not to mention your insurance
agent will be ****ed off if they find out. Murphy being Murphy, the one time
you need the key in a hurry to escape, it aint there.

I think OP will find that the thick Lexan will look like crap, and probably
be drafty. And if it is a wood door in in wood frame, it really won't
increse security. Even solid wood doors are pretty easy to shatter with
repeated kicks near the striker. I'd replace the busted glass panel, maybe
with a wired-glass one, and add a second layer of thin lexan on inside,
which will give some dead air for insulation.

aem sends...

"ameijers" writes:

"MrAoD" wrote in message
...
(KublaiKhan) writes:

The glass window in my solid-wood door was broken and the thief was
able to reach in and open the deadbolt. I'm planning to install a 1/2"
thick lexan sheet with L-shaped stainless steel brackets in the four
corners, caulk the gaps and cover the edges with fir stops.

[snip]

Easier (if not cheaper) to swap out the deadbolt with one that's keyed on
both
sides. That's what I did with my exterior doors that have enough glass
for a
thief to be able to reach the lock after smashing glass.

Just make sure you keep the key in a convenient place.

Bad idea, and against fire code in many areas, not to mention your insurance
agent will be ****ed off if they find out. Murphy being Murphy, the one time
you need the key in a hurry to escape, it aint there.

Agreed it's against many codes but I make certain that the key is right where
it's supposed to be at least twice a day, not including my evening perimeter
check.


I think OP will find that the thick Lexan will look like crap, and probably
be drafty. And if it is a wood door in in wood frame, it really won't
increse security. Even solid wood doors are pretty easy to shatter with
repeated kicks near the striker. I'd replace the busted glass panel, maybe
with a wired-glass one, and add a second layer of thin lexan on inside,
which will give some dead air for insulation.

Lexan's a sucky idea for the reasons you mention, which is why I didn't endorse
the OP's proposal.

Wired glass obscures the view, not something I think the OP would wish.

Short of bulletproof glass, if you're going to have a glass exterior door you'
just gotta suck it up.

Depending on the OP's circumstances and the crime rate in his area, an
up-and-down bolt might work.

I'm guessing the real problem with break-ins is in the absence of the owner, in
which case you could leave the interior key in the lock while the house is
tenanted?

Best,

Marc

Leave the key in the lock when you are home remove it when you leave.

"ameijers" wrote in message


Bad idea, and against fire code in many areas, not to mention your
insurance
agent will be ****ed off if they find out. Murphy being Murphy, the one
time
you need the key in a hurry to escape, it aint there.


You are right about the codes, but I still have them and I'm not changing
them. Just wake up one morning and find the window glass broken and you
will understand. I'm damned glad I had a double key setup.

The keys are in easy reach from inside, but not from outside. My insurance
guy has never asked about my locks either.

There is not a house built that cannot be penetrated, but you sure can lower
the chances one hell of a lot with a few security measure.
Ed

On 13 Mar 2004 10:16:22 GMT, (MrAoD) wrote:

| (KublaiKhan) writes:
|
| The glass window in my solid-wood door was broken and the thief was
| able to reach in and open the deadbolt. I'm planning to install a 1/2"
| thick lexan sheet with L-shaped stainless steel brackets in the four
| corners, caulk the gaps and cover the edges with fir stops. The
| brackets will be attached to the door with wood screws and to the
| plastic with machine screws and the brackets will be on the inside of
| the door. Any suggestions, comments?
|
| Easier (if not cheaper) to swap out the deadbolt with one that's keyed on both
| sides. That's what I did with my exterior doors that have enough glass for a
| thief to be able to reach the lock after smashing glass.
|
| Just make sure you keep the key in a convenient place.
|
| Best,
|
| Marc
|

I installed a lexan sheet inside several doors, but left the glass
installed. I screwed the edges of the lexan into the door about every
foot (I drilled holes through the lexan for the screws and also put
3/4 inch wide decorative washers under the screw heads to keep them
from pulling through). The lexan panel braces the doors and adds
considerable structural strength in addition to backing up the glass.
Even adds a little (!) insulation.

FWIW, I also removed the woodwork on the jamb and screwed 2 x 6
planks inside the outside door jamb (and then replaced the woodwork)
to allow the locks and the hinges to be screwed into more solid wood
and to stiffen the frame itself. The locks and hinges were originally
screwed into 1-inch chestnut and in several places could be pulled
out with your fingers. In addition, I installed a weather strip over
the outside edges of the door that makes it a little harder to
effectively wedge a crowbar into the crack.

On two little-used side doors and the back door, I put an ordinary
sliding bolt running vertically from the edge of the door into a bolt
hole in the floor to strengthen the bottom corner of the door and add
protection. I also put a bar across the top of the doors using
U-brackets and a 2 x 4. This means that you lock up from inside and
that you cannot get in from the outside, of course, so you cannot use
it on every door. (Doh!)

On the front door, only, I put a heavy-duty inside surface mounted
deadbolt lock that is keyed on the inside and the outside. The door
also has its original mortise lock with a deadbolt, but it unlocks
with a turn of a latch.

Adding the double keyed lock could be risky for homes with children or
very elderly people and I am sure is generally against fire codes. Our
house has only two adults with mental faculties more or less intact.
We keep the key in the lock during the daytime with the lock unlocked.
At night we lock up and put the key on a small table next to the door.
One might alternatively use a hook next to the door. We have extra
keys hidden permanently in several other places around the living room
just in case. The face mounted lock is also bolted clear through the
door instead of screwed on -- actually two bolts and two screws.

Why go to such extremes in our upper middle class suburban
neighborhood?

First of all, we were burglarized in 1982 when we first moved in.
That's a real motivator, even though they didn't get much at all (we
surprised them and they ran. I went to call the cops but they had
stolen the phone!).

The entry was through one of the side doors, an all-glass one. They
crowbarred the door and the two locks easily tore out of the jamb,
splintering the wood on the jamb. One lock was a security deadbolt
lock; the other an ancient mortise lock. Because the jamb was so thin,
the screws pretty much just pulled out.

The doors are vintage 1921 doors original to the house and I didn't
want to replace them with modern steel doors and muck up the house
design. Two of them are all glass -- 15 panes. The door frames are
chestnut and were originally thin hollow boxes until I filled them
with 2 x 6's. The front door has two narrow lights on either side, but
they are way too narrow for a person to crawl through (but you could
put your hand in and open a lock).

The back and one side door have large 4-pane windows in the top half
of the door. The doors are thin and weak. The bar at the top and the
sliding bolt at the bottom add quite a bit of structural strength.
Breaking off the corners of the door is now much harder. The lexan
panel strengthens the top of the door. The bottom panel of the door is
solid wood and not paneled. Even though thin by modern standards it
would be difficult and noisy to kick out. All the back and side doors
also have security-type storm doors on them which would take a little
while to get through.

I also had bars installed on my basement windows. I put stronger locks
on my first floor windows to make them harder to jimmy. I put up
lighting around the house with movement sensors. I got a real safe for
real valuables.

Nowadays crime is almost non-existent in the neighborhood, for a
variety of reasons, (at least for the time being) so my efforts all
seem a little crazy in retrospect, but at the time they served us
well. And crime is not entirely gone, of course. I guess you never
know.

(Tom Miller) wrote in message ...
On 13 Mar 2004 10:16:22 GMT, (MrAoD) wrote:

| (KublaiKhan) writes:
|
| The glass window in my solid-wood door was broken and the thief was
| able to reach in and open the deadbolt. I'm planning to install a 1/2"
| thick lexan sheet with L-shaped stainless steel brackets in the four
| corners, caulk the gaps and cover the edges with fir stops. The
| brackets will be attached to the door with wood screws and to the
| plastic with machine screws and the brackets will be on the inside of
| the door. Any suggestions, comments?
|
| Easier (if not cheaper) to swap out the deadbolt with one that's keyed on both
| sides. That's what I did with my exterior doors that have enough glass for a
| thief to be able to reach the lock after smashing glass.
|
| Just make sure you keep the key in a convenient place.
|
| Best,
|
| Marc
|

I installed a lexan sheet inside several doors, but left the glass
installed. I screwed the edges of the lexan into the door about every
foot (I drilled holes through the lexan for the screws and also put
3/4 inch wide decorative washers under the screw heads to keep them
from pulling through). The lexan panel braces the doors and adds
considerable structural strength in addition to backing up the glass.
Even adds a little (!) insulation.

FWIW, I also removed the woodwork on the jamb and screwed 2 x 6
planks inside the outside door jamb (and then replaced the woodwork)
to allow the locks and the hinges to be screwed into more solid wood
and to stiffen the frame itself. The locks and hinges were originally
screwed into 1-inch chestnut and in several places could be pulled
out with your fingers. In addition, I installed a weather strip over
the outside edges of the door that makes it a little harder to
effectively wedge a crowbar into the crack.

Rest of the excellent post deleted to save space
Thanks everyone for your suggestions. Having paid big money for the
lexan sheet ($30/sf), I was looking for critiques on how I was planning
to mount it. I went ahead and installed it over the weekend and it looks
gorgeous. Hopefully it won't yellow nor get scratched up too much over time.
I had considered and rejected the idea of mounting the lexan on the inside
in addition to the glass window. The door is a nice one with a red patina
developed over time and I didn't want it looking like something I bought
at an industrial swap meet. My creativity doesn't extend far enough to
make a plastic sheet screwed on very attractive, I'm afraid.
BTW, the number I got for thermal expansion is ~4x10^-5. I assume the
units are length/unit length/C. If that's the case, the 800 mm-long sheet
I have would expand 1 mm for a 30 degree C swing in temperature. This
being Seattle, the temp change is realistic. Also insulation is not
such a big issue. A large number of homes still sport single-pane glass
windows.
My reason for not going with glass was that if the thief were to return
(as allegedly happens often) he'd break the window again. A good thief
of course would pick the lock straight and all these ideas would be
useless in that case.
The police officer suggested that I strengthen the notch for the dead
bolt. I'm thinking of attaching a brass plate on the jamb to augment the
notch. I'd appreciate suggestions for any other minimal but effective
designs.
Thanks again.

KK

KublaiKhan wrote:

The police officer suggested that I strengthen the notch for the
dead bolt. I'm thinking of attaching a brass plate on the jamb to
augment the notch. I'd appreciate suggestions for any other minimal
but effective designs.

The purpose of a plate is to spread the load from the dead bolt when the
door is kicked/shoved; therefore, the longer it is the better.

The most effective would be a "U" shaped plate encasing the frame. Next
would be an "L" affixed so the short side fits over the jamb on the
*outside*. Naturally, the screws holding it would be in the long leg going
into the frame parallel to the closed door. For either of those you would
have to cut a hole for the deadbolt.

Least effective would be a plate on the inside. Through fastening with
bolts from the outside would hold much more firmly than screws.

--
dadiOH
_____________________________

dadiOH's dandies v3.0...
....a help file of info about MP3s, recording from
LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that.
Get it at http://mysite.verizon.net/xico
____________________________

(KublaiKhan) wrote:

The glass window in my solid-wood door was broken and the thief was
able to reach in and open the deadbolt. I'm planning to install a 1/2"
thick lexan sheet with L-shaped stainless steel brackets in the four
corners, caulk the gaps and cover the edges with fir stops.

a) Fix the broken window with plain glass. Call a locksmith to install
a new deadbolt, further down out of reach, leave top one open.

b) Install new door which as a more secure door/lock arrangement.

KublaiKhan wrote:
The glass window in my solid-wood door was broken and the thief was
able to reach in and open the deadbolt. I'm planning to install a
1/2" thick lexan sheet with L-shaped stainless steel brackets in
the four corners, caulk the gaps and cover the edges with fir
stops. The brackets will be attached to the door with wood screws
and to the plastic with machine screws and the brackets will be on
the inside of the door. Any suggestions, comments?
KK

Half inch would be overkill. By double at least. Also, keep your dog away
from it...

--
dadiOH
_____________________________

dadiOH's dandies v3.0...
....a help file of info about MP3s, recording from
LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that.
Get it at http://mysite.verizon.net/xico
____________________________

On 12 Mar 2004 18:24:38 -0800, (KublaiKhan) wrote:

The glass window in my solid-wood door was broken and the thief was
able to reach in and open the deadbolt. I'm planning to install a 1/2"
thick lexan sheet with L-shaped stainless steel brackets in the four
corners, caulk the gaps and cover the edges with fir stops. The
brackets will be attached to the door with wood screws and to the
plastic with machine screws and the brackets will be on the inside of
the door. Any suggestions, comments?

Lexan scratches very easily, and looks like hell in a few weeks. A
deadbolt keyed both side and a burglar alarm would be better options.

Jeff

Jeff Cochran wrote in
news
On 12 Mar 2004 18:24:38 -0800, (KublaiKhan) wrote:

The glass window in my solid-wood door was broken and the thief was
able to reach in and open the deadbolt. I'm planning to install a 1/2"
thick lexan sheet with L-shaped stainless steel brackets in the four
corners, caulk the gaps and cover the edges with fir stops. The
brackets will be attached to the door with wood screws and to the
plastic with machine screws and the brackets will be on the inside of
the door. Any suggestions, comments?

Lexan scratches very easily, and looks like hell in a few weeks. A
deadbolt keyed both side and a burglar alarm would be better options.

Jeff


Just putting in 1/2" thick -glass- panes would make them difficult to
break.You could also use tempered glass to make it even harder.
I also would not have ANY windows in my door,or within arm's reach of the
door bolt.Use a peephole or security camera to see who's knocking.
--
Jim Yanik
jyanik-at-kua.net

Jim Yanik wrote:

Jeff Cochran wrote in
news
On 12 Mar 2004 18:24:38 -0800, (KublaiKhan) wrote:

The glass window in my solid-wood door was broken and the thief was
able to reach in and open the deadbolt. I'm planning to install a 1/2"
thick lexan sheet with L-shaped stainless steel brackets in the four
corners, caulk the gaps and cover the edges with fir stops. The
brackets will be attached to the door with wood screws and to the
plastic with machine screws and the brackets will be on the inside of
the door. Any suggestions, comments?

Lexan scratches very easily, and looks like hell in a few weeks. A
deadbolt keyed both side and a burglar alarm would be better options.

Jeff


Just putting in 1/2" thick -glass- panes would make them difficult to
break.You could also use tempered glass to make it even harder.
I also would not have ANY windows in my door,or within arm's reach of the
door bolt.Use a peephole or security camera to see who's knocking.
--
Jim Yanik
jyanik-at-kua.net

The real solution is to install the CORRECT deadbolt which is a key
operated deadbolt which has no handle. That's the kind you use with a
window in the door. You hang the key close by but out of sight Yoy
permanently attach the key nearby, out of sight for safety purposes.
A thief can still break the window but they can't release the deadbolt
to walk through the door.