My house has a sliding glass door as the main entrance and I need a solution to have it secure from tiny hands. My problem is it needs to be able to unlock and lock on both sides of the door so a pin drop or cross bar won’t work.
What about a bolt that passes through the door and can be secured and released on both sides eg
Might take some fiddling to get the bolt back… hmmm
I like this idea and it could work well. I was considering a latch system but the issue is it would need to go at the top of the door and would be problematic on the outside with the stairs and there can be leverage at the bottom popping the door out of the tracks
Change the stairs. If you can’t stand in front of the door the entryway is poorly designed.
This actually might be the quickest solution even if he opens the door he won’t be able to go through. I’ll look into see if there’s any gates that would work! Thank you!
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Not being able to exit your home in an emergency without a key is a serious safety problem. In most places it is not permitted.
International Residential Code R311.4.4 “All egress doors shall be readily openable from the side from which egress is to be made without the use of a key or special knowledge or effort”. Most local codes are derived from this.
Yes this is why I need it to be accessible on both sides of the door. 1 for emergency access and 2 so I and my partner can unlock it coming home from work if the other is sleeping edit added missing word
I guess I didn’t understand what you were describing. When we moved in to our house, the previous owners had a deadbolt that locked with a key on the inside instead of a thumb turn, and it was the only way to lock the door. This is a pretty bad idea since it creates a potential situation where you’re stuck inside your house, or have to find another exit. In some emergencies, seconds count. Even if you know how to open the door, you might have someone over who doesn’t, which is why fire codes are the way they are. Someone unfamiliar with the setup, panicking, in the dark, in a room full of smoke, needs to be able to escape without solving a puzzle.
Because I already had experience with having to replace that lock with an appropriate one for an exit door, I jumped straight to the assumption that when you said “lock on both sides”, you were talking about a key, and not just a childproof latch of some kind. I have the privilege of not living with anyone who is a flight risk, so it’s easy for me to just dismiss it as unsafe. I looked at some of the solutions out there and they seem to be designed to stop toddlers with no dexterity, not an autistic person determined to turn all the things. Sorry if my answer was unhelpful; people are injured or killed every day because they created a situation they didn’t realize was hazardous until it was too late. My intention was only to prevent the downsides of locking the door this way from being overlooked.
To be completely honest my only solution might be to rip out the door and put in a regular door so normal child locks will work. With home and safety checks we will be subjected to, having the door requiring a key on both sides won’t work and will be flagged as a danger. Thank you for your response all input has been extremely helpful including your insight
We use a keyed backdoor to prevent visiting children from accessing the pool.
they asked for advice on a door to protect a child, not a lesson on municipal code. go out there and fix it yourself.
While they did, they cannot simply ignore municipal code with their solution.
Au contrere. one can simply ignore municipal code. happens often and everywhere, not to mention evrerwhere it doesn’t exist. unless it’s enforced, and that’s the key. also, i’m not against building to code. just realistic.
Yes, and that’s how people get killed in completely preventable ways.
Again, I am not against building to code. “Code” doesn’t exist in much of the world, and sometimes the materials aren’t available to make it possible.
Municipal code is usually to prevent people from dying. It’s simply dumb to ignore it in a case like this.
you know what, for all builders and contractors: please build things in a way that people don’t die. forgot about that part.
Right, better to let them burn alive in a fire instead of pointing that out, right?
Nope, that’s on you. Go ahead, cyberpunk007, and explain how to survive.
This comment feels needlessly hostile.
i’m sorry that I was too aggressive. I still feel that a lot of commenters were throwing shade where it didn’t belong.
That’s because it is. These “why don’t YOU do something about it” comments always are, I just don’t get why people are so aggressive straight out of the starting block.
I could use more information.
Is the door keyed? Key hole on outside and a lever on the inside?
Yes the current lock is a simple toggle that grabs an edge of the door on the inside. There is a keyhole on the outside which pushes the lever up unlatching the clasp from the edge of the door edited spelling errors
Sorry if this is an obvious question but since it’s the main entrance, you already have a key, right? You already have the means to lock and unlock this door in a childproof way from both sides. Usually childproof locks are for pantry doors and such.
How come you need an extra layer of locking for the main door?
The current lock is a simple toggle. My autistic child loves to play with switches/nobs/wheels ect so he will be able to easily open the lock and pull open the door. There is nothing I can find to stop him from access to the toggle without blocking access from unlocking from the other side of the door
sounds like a door on the side of a trailer or some such. people live and raise kids in a wide variety of environments.
Yes I’m in a trailer and it’s a stupid door that the Manufacturer put in to “add more natural light” if I have to stay in this trailer for more than a year I’ll take it out and put in an actual door
I’m on your side friend. Your goals are true. Sorry I still don’t know the answer.
Hm…I don’t think I’ve heard of trailers having sliding glass doors for the entrance. But I’m really curious as to what this looks like. I’ve never heard of anyone having a sliding glass door for their main entrance, trailer or not. I’m trying to picture how that locks and unlocks.
Lol. I haven’t seen sliding glass doors on trailers either, but I have seen a house with a main sliding glass door. That house also had a regular door on the side, but it was far easier to use the sliding one especially when accessing the property from the street.
I’m not endorsing it, but it definitely happens. It’s like this: measure twice. cut once, or more than once. Put door in hole. Fill gaps with whatever caulk gun or whatever. …
Collect rent.
You can get a lockset with a numerical keypad on both the inside and outside hardware. i.e. no inside knob on the lock for little fingers to let themselves out. It might technically be a fire hazard, though, unless you have an alternate means of quick escape. Keep a safety glass breaker tool by the door but up high or something.
Most keypad sets use a deadbolt system, because it’s a sliding door a deadbolt won’t work because it slides open. I have seen other locks that use clasps but none of them have keypads on both sides of the door.
edit: Last night when i looked on Amazon, it appeared that there were several for a sliding patio door. There are thin ones for sure, you could ask in the questions if they will work for mortise locks. I know you dont specifically need the solution to be “smart home” capable but maybe one of these solutions would align with your needs.
Perfect thanks I’ll look into it!
Some kind of a magnet pin situation? Like the child cabinet locks that use a magnet. From one side your can just move the lock. From the other side your can use a magnet to move the lock.
That might be an interesting approach if I can figure out how to get a pin through like a deadbolt and disengage with a magnet on a stick. Thanks for the different idea!
Just thinking outside the box here, what about an alarm or chime instead of a lock?
You can’t make it impossible for a child to open. But you can make sure that if they do open it, you’ll know.
This is an option however Ill be moving beside a river and my child is autistic so a lock would be best if I can figure out a way to do it
I grew up autistic and fascinated with water. My mom handled that by taking me swimming all the time. We were at pools, rivers, lakes, water parks all the time and I absolutely loved it.
The world is full of water hazards, and the best safety plan is to master them.
My little guy is more interested in how things move and what they do when used. Like flicking light switches turning knobs, pressing buttons ect and seeing what happens when they are engaged/disengaged. Our worry is that he’ll open the door to explore to find more things to try and get lost or wander towards the river in search of more switches or nobs to turn
Like she had me in a swimming class as an infant. There’s a picture of me as a baby with little water wings on, in her hands, in the water.
We didn’t know I was autistic, incidentally. I didn’t know until I was 30.
One of the things she liked to mention is how when I was four, they had me out on the beach in California, and were watching me from a distance. I was looking at the sand, crouched down facing away from the water, and a wave came in, and even though I was mentally absorbed in the sand, I stood up when the wave came by.
She always liked going on about natural wisdom and kids are amazing and all that. She was a type for sure.
But I guess what I’m saying is I have had a lifelong love affair with water and Mom encouraged that and as a result water doesn’t frighten or bother me in the least because Im a strong swimmer and I know how to handle it in various conditions: streams, rivers, pools, lakes, muddy streams, rocky streams, freezing cold water, thin ice, ocean, kayaks, life jackets, wet suits, canoes, motorboats, snorkels, collecting frogs and building little rock dams, it’s been a great part of my life and I’m way more competent to keep myself safe around water.
I’m not saying don’t get a lock. Definitely get a lock and control any unsupervised access to the river.
But also give him lots of supervised access. Like, hours and hours where you’re just hanging out and he’s nearby right there at the water’s edge doing whatever he feels like.
He’s drawn to the water because he wants to experiment and explore it. You can reduce the danger of that drive by allowing it to operate. Autistic minds love to learn really deeply, and unlike the world of culture the physical world is something that can be studied ever deeper without any loss of appropriateness for anything learned. Physics doesn’t change, and nature operates in a learnable fashion. I’m so glad I was in nature all the time as a boy, and often on my own, exploring however I and my little friends saw fit.
Probably not what you want to hear, but when I was growing up my dad used a few tubes of silicone to seal up some of the windows and sliding door at my house. When we got older he just took a utility knife and cut it off
The issue here is that we use the door as our main entrance so sealing it like this won’t help
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Put the lock high up?
If I’m able to build a landing/porch on the outside this is the easiest solution. But at the moment my stairs make it 1.5 feet lower than the inside floor which means it’ll to high on the outside but to low on the inside.
Ah. Sorry I missed that.
Remote control then. Getting into the house requires push of a button or typing in code. Getting out can be done with manual turn of deadbolt because inside you’re high enough to reach:
- fire failsafe because you’ve got mechanical control when trying to exit even if electricity’s out
- harder to copy your key because it’ll be a key fob or something
- if you do lose a key you can simply de-authorize it instead of having to change locks
- probably cost you a few hundred to a thousand for the hardware and install labor. Just my guesses at price haven’t looked into it
What does the lock look like? Does unlocking on one side mean the lock portion on the other side moves too?
If it’s like the sliding doors I know with the flat lock, you could use something like this and keep it flat to lock.
The current lock just latches onto a small metal bar… if someone pulled hard enough it would just bend open.
How about a traditional deadbolt at the top or bottom?
Deadbolt at the top can cause the door to shift out of its tracks when pulled on and if it’s at the bottom it’s easily accessible to tiny hands playing with it. If I place it more in the top centre it’ll be Duffy to reach with a key unless it’s electronic… and that comes with many other issues
I’ve only ever seen deadbolts on swinging doors but this has gotta be a thing for sliding doors also
Just rotate 90°. I don’t know the easiest way to drill through it, but a decent handyman could probably do it.
