Double glazed doors | AC Locksmiths Norfolk

Maintenance for your locks

It’s that time of year again when the weather starts to do funny things to our doors. I am already being called out to do jobs that could be avoided with some basic maintenance for your locks.

Here on the Norfolk Coast, locks are not only at risk of rusting, but also damage from sea salt and wasps (more on those later).

So what can you do to avoid having to call me, or at least make the call a bit cheaper?

Firstly, keep your door (and window) locks clean. It’s very easy to forget about the front edge of a door when it is shut while you clean, but I see some shocking sights in my work. The more dirt and dust is allowed to build up, the more it finds its way into the working parts of your lock eventually causing damage.

The next step is oiling your locks. There is a lot of argument in the locksmithing world as to whether WD40 or graphite is better. For me, I say WD40 used twice a year (every time you change your locks is an easy way to remember and perfect for changes in weather) works just fine because it coats and flushes at the same time. Oiling does not mean just squirting a bit of oil where you put your key in the lock. If you have a wooden door with a mortice (“Chubb” type) lock, then the part inside stops the oil getting to where is needed and if you have a lock with a “Yale” type key, then oil in the key way is only getting a tiny percentage of what needs to be oiled. If you have any lock with a latch, either pull the handle down or rotate any lever knob to retract that latch. If you look where the latch retracts, you will see that the wedge shape of the latch will create a perfect gap for you to put in the straw provided with cans of WD40. Squirt for about 5 seconds (10 seconds if first time) and then work the handles, etc a few times to get the oil all over the insides.

On doors with multipoint locking systems (eg UPVC doors) you should also look at the front edge and lift the handles up and down a few times. Give another squirt of oil to anything you see moving. When you do this, you might even find the sticker that tells you to oil the door that you never knew was there and the installer never told you about! If you have a wooden door with a single deadlock, unscrew the faceplate at the front and take it off. This will now give you a larger gap around bolt. You might have to hold the WD40 straw in one corner, but squirt what you can, being aware you might get some splash back at you and oil does not clean up from clothes easily, so no maintenance in your wedding dress/designer suits. Don’t forget to put the face plate back on afterwards. In all cases, put some rags on the floor as oil will run down and drip off the bottom of the door and WD40 even stains paving stones.

Once you have done all the above, keep an eye on how difficult your door is to open. Hotter summers are warping even doors that never recognisably warped before. If your door is becoming difficult to operate in any way, there will be undue stress on various parts of your lock which will eventually lead to something breaking. The most common problem last year was French doors shrinking away from each other and the hooks of the multipont mechanisms not being able to get into their slots. Multipoint mechanism doors are usually adjustable, if your door is not as easy to operate when closed as it is open, best get the door adjusted before something breaks and you will have to add a locking product on to the cost of the adjustment.

Finally, those pesky wasps. If you have a wooden door with a multipoint locking system (lift the handles to lock) and it does not have top and bottom bolts, there will be a gap at the top behind the metal faceplate. This gap runs down behind the faceplate as far as the first moving part you can see. It is the perfect size for wasps to make cells in which to grow more baby wasps. Those cells harden a lot and can cause the mechanism to break. My advice is to at least put insect repellent all over the top of the door and then maybe stick a small cotton wool ball just in the top to bar access. I’ve dealt with a few of these cases now, and I really don’t like angry wasps trying to get me while I destroy their hard work!

If you have any questions regarding the above information, please don’t hesitate to get in touch by phone, text or email.

Thanks for reading.

admin June 27, 2023

Keeping locks maintained / Lock maintenance / Multipoint mechanism maintenance / Oiling door locks / wasps and doors /

Seasonal UPVC door Problems

After the Beast from the East has left us, the weather has finally started to warm up again.

And with the warm weather, comes the next round of problems with upvc door locks.

This is especia

lly true for French doors that have been shut through the entire winter and lockingmechanisms on wooden doors as the wood starts to dry out. If you have any type of door where youhave to lift the handles to lock it, and the door has become hard to lock, then call your local locksmith now, before something breaks. Your local locksmith can usually make some dooradjustments to get everything working fine again, thus saving you the extra cost of replacingexpensive broken mechanisms. Check your door locking mechanisms for any sign of rust and oil twice a year- I suggest when you put the clocks forwards and back. When oiling, give a good squirteverywhere you can see a moving part, and if you push the handles down, the retracting latch willreveal a small hole into which you should squirt more oil to make sure everything is well lubricated.

Away from multi-point locking doors, I have been on a few jobs recently where the customers havecomplained of hard to operate mortice (often called ‘Chubb’) type locks. My first action upon arriving, is to try the lock for myself. When discovering that the lock is indeed difficult, I inspect thekey. Locks usually work or seize up. Intermittent problems usually point to something else, and ninetimes out of ten, I see the customer has given me a co

pied key, or one of the prongs is bent. Keys cutin chain key cutting shops are usually done by people who are not trained very well because the staff turnover is high because wages and career prospects are low. Cobblers, engravers, etc who do key cutting have usually been doing it for yearsand have a more practiced eye when comparing their cut to the original. You can also ask your local key cutter to provide genuine copy blanks for you.

You might have to pay a bit more and you might have to wait while they order some in (some don’t stock because too many people want the cheap option when it is not properly explained), but your key will be better quality, last longer and protect the life of your lock. It all works out better value in the long

run. My main point on this topic however, is this; if you are having intermittent problems with yourlock, gather all your keys and try each one with the door open about ten times. Keep the keys that work. Get more copies from the originals that will have the lock bran

d on them, and ask your key cutter for original brand blanks from which to cut your new keys. Doing this yourself, will save the cost of calling me out to fix a non-existent problem. If all keys experience problems with the door open, or the problem persists when the door is closed, then by all means, call your local locksmith.

In other news, smart locks for wooden doors that are insurance standard are coming soon. If you want more information on this brilliant new product, please call or email using the in

formation on my contacts page.

A reminder that many elderly people do not have access to relevant information. If you know

someone without internet access, please check their locks for the British standard kite marks. If theydon’t have these marks, there is a strong likelihood that these people are not covered by the insurance they are paying for. Please give them the number of a local locksmith who will do a free security check (if he is worth anything) and give a no hassle, no obligation quote. And while UPVCdoors do not currently need a kite mark, cylinder snapping is on the rise and entirely preventable with the correct kite marked, anti-snap cylinders. I have tested ones you can buy in DIY shops and they are not as good as ones your local locksmith can provide.

If you require any more information about the topics raised in this or any of my other blogs, then please contact through any of the ways shown on my contacts page.

Thanks for reading.

admin April 9, 2018

UPVC door problems /

Multi-point lock problems

Lock maintenance

In previous blogs I have mentioned the importance of regular lock maintenance. This has been highlighted recently, as I seem to be going through a series of cases where doors with multi-point locking systems seem to be causing problems. This is especially true when the doors have shoot bolts at the top and bottom of the doors.

The bolts themselves are never particularly strong, so if the system is engaged without the door being properly closed first, it is very easy to push these bolts out of shape, which then causes them to wear as they do not fit properly into the holes in the frame. I do see this happening a lot with French doors. UPVC doors are usually easier to correct as there are often adjustments that can be made, but wooden doors that warp, expand and contract with the weather, can be very tricky.

If your door handles are hard to raise, or you need to hold them up to turn the key, then there is likely to be a problem. Stand back and look to see if the doors are straight and even. Check they fit into the frame properly. Look for signs of wear caused by bolts scraping woodwork. If there are signs of damage, call your local locksmith while there is a chance the problem can be rectified.

Should you have any questions regarding this or any other issues mentioned in my blogs, please get in touch via any of the methods on my contacts page.

Thanks for reading.

admin May 29, 2016

double glazed door problems / Double Glazed Wooden Doors / multi-point locking mechanisms /

Different locks explained Part 4

Having looked at the locking barrels for double glazed doors in my previous blog, this blog is dedicated to the actual locking mechanisms themselves. There are several different ways in which they work.

The first and most basic is called a roller;

When the door closes and you lift the handles, it simply rolls into position behind a keep that sits on your door frame and looks like this.

Very few doors only have rollers on their own nowadays as they are incredibly easy to bypass. Their main purpose is to hold the door a bit tighter when closed to stop draughts and they might be the only option on small doors. They are harder to bypass on smaller doors. Without giving the reader tips on how to break into a home, I can only suggest that if you have a double glazed door and it only has these rollers holding it in place, you might want to seek advice from your local locksmith to see if alternatives are available.

Over time, these rollers can shift a little in position, making the door difficult to lock and unlock. You can see from this next image that the correct sized allen key (hex key) can be inserted to rotate the roller. A quarter turn should be tried before attempting to lock the door again and if that does not work, then a further quarter turn and so on until you have established the problem is not with the roller or the problem is fixed.

If this does not rectify the problem, it might mean the door has dropped a little and simply moving the keep up or down a few millimetres might do the job, but at this point, I would suggest calling your local locksmith as there could be more serious problems to contend with.
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A step up from the roller is the mushroom;

It is more secure than the roller because it slides into a slotted keep where it holds tight. There is nothing to adjust on these mushrooms, so if it causes trouble, and the door cannot be adjusted, the only option is to move the keep accordingly.
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Next we have hooks and bolts that come out of the mechanism like this:

The hooks and bolts themselves do not adjust, but again if the door is out of position, there are adjustments that can be made, this time to the keeps, that look something like this.

You can see from the picture that an allen key will allow you to adjust this keep. Some only allow backwards and forwards movement, so again, if you are unsure, please call your local locksmith.

Hopefully, you will never have to see behind the scenes of one of these mechanisms, so here is what goes on in the hook case itself.

You can see this one has a hook and bolt. These parts do not often go wrong by themselves, but when they do, the door is extremely difficult to open without damage to either the door itself or the door frame. Therefore basic maintenance is vital and any signs of stiffness when lifting the handles should be dealt with by a professional.

We can now take a look at the gearbox, or centre case, where all main action takes place. There are many brands of these each with differing sizes and shapes within the brand, so this picture is just one example;

This example is called a double spindle and can be set up in two ways. The standard way is to have both handles operating through this hole.

In this case, the door will only be secure when the handles are lifted and the key is turned. However you can have handles where the inside handle operates through the top hole, but the outer handle is slightly lower and goes through this hole

In this case, everything operates exactly the same, but the lower hole does not allow the latch to pull back, meaning that you need the key to get back in. of course, if you are going further than the end of the garden, you should engage the locking mechanism completely as normal, but with this configuration, the door is at least technically secure.

These next two pictures show the hole that the locking barrel slides through and the barrel in place.

This is the simplest part of the lock. Everything inside above that, however is a minefield of cogs, levers and other moving parts. Please don’t expect your locksmith to be able to open these up and replace inner parts as with so many products around, knowledge of every one would be amazing and the locksmith would need an extra trailer to carry the spares, which would only be second hand as our suppliers do not provide anything other than complete products.

The centre keep for this part, looks something like this.

And again, we can adjust certain parts like the latch keep on this one. Loosening these screws, allows the keep to move forwards and backwards.

I have come across many problems where simply adjusting this part, which may have moved when someone slammed the door, has rectified the situation. Quite often, the locking mechanism will not operate if the latch is still being pushed in, which it can if this part is in the wrong position.
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Now, in this blog, I have mentioned doors dropping, which they often do. A sudden gust of wind, stroppy teens slamming, or even direct sunlight warping can all affect how the door sits in the frame.
Most modern upvc doors have hinges that are adjustable. If you have a door with hinges like this;

Then there is a good chance the door can be adjusted. The picture shows the one type of hinge that can be a little awkward because you have to prize it apart gently but firmly to get at the adjuster inside. Most actually have a plastic plug easily visible, which when removed, allow access to another allen key adjuster inside. If you are in any doubt, call your local locksmith. But if you feel like taking the job on yourself, half a turn of the adjuster should be all you move before trying to lock the door again. That should be enough to tell you if the door is easier or harder to lock. If harder, then you need to turn the opposite way. Remember, there are anything from two to four hinges that may be adjusted, so this is not an easy job.

Should you have any questions regarding the above information, please do not hesitate to contact me through any of the methods on my contacts page.
Thanks for reading

admin February 3, 2016

Different locks explained / Lock mechanisms /

Double Glazed Doors & Heat

The heat is on!

There have been some very hot days recently, and the direct sunlight on many UPVC doors is keeping me busy. I have already mentioned in previous blogs that the sun has an effect on these doors, warping them and causing problems. If this sounds like a problem you are having, do not force the door handles up or down as this could break the internal mechanism.

If you can use another door, do so for the rest of the day. One customer of mine thought his door was completely stuck in the morning when the sun was shining straight on it. I was busy all day and could not get to him until the evening, at which point the door had cooled and was working fine again. So if you can, wait until the door has had some shade, or evening has come around, and then try the door again – it may save you a locksmith fee.

If your door is still causing problems when it cools down, call your local locksmith before putting too much pressure on the handles. Usually your locksmith can rectify the problem by adjusting the door hinges, or other parts of the door to make it all operational again.

Please remember that this problem can re-occur, though and you may need to call your locksmith out again, especially if it gets really hot.

If you have any questions regarding the information above, please use any of the methods on my contacts page.

Thanks for reading

admin July 14, 2015

Double Glazed Doors in the Heat / UPVC door repair /