GDC

Security is still one of the main concerns for customers when purchasing a garage door, especially when the garage has a doorway into the main house.

But what makes a garage door secure?

Most older up and over garage doors with a single or twin cable (on double width doors) latching can be easily and quietly broken into as most locks on older type doors offer little resistance to force and once forced and broken the handle will operate the latch. As the latch is more often than not securing to a timber sub frame the latch area itself is an easy target, forced with very small and common tools. More recently manufactured one piece up and over garage doors are provided with at least two points of locking and the better ones use a steel rod rather than a cable system.

These lock latches are operated by a rotary type handle and the profile cylinder barrel is seperately positioned to the handle itself so breaking the handle gets a potential thief nowhere. The best use of these locks and latches is when combined with a box section steel sub frame as the catches are fixed to this steel frame and Hormann and Garador doors also have a steel plate in front of the latches to maximise resistance even further.

Another common method of gaining access to old type up and over steel doors was to peel the corner of the panel up and on older doors this was easy as the doors had very little strength in the C channel chassis. Nowadays, higher quality manufacturers like Novoferm, Hormann and Garador use a box section steel chassis construction with maximum resistance to force in the corners which can be further enhanced with 4 point locking, a latch point in each corner.

We can talk about many ways in which various doors are broken into as there are timber, grp and Upvc door panels on the market and for example the basic ABS plastic doors constructed from a single, thin sheet of soft ABS plastic material can be easily cut through with a good, sharp knife!! Very quietly too making any type of locking totally ineffective as all standard garage door locks can be opened from the inside without a key!

What to do then?
Well common sense will tell you that the double skinned aluminium and steel insulated roller shutter and sectional garage doors on the market are amongst the best for offering resistance to opportunist attacks as the panels are very strong indeed. However we also have products such as double skinned steel hinged swing doors, double skinned timber and steel round the corner doors and the wonderful Silvelox timber up and over garage doors - 80mm of panel resistance with very advanced active locking.

It would be difficult to list the garage doors that are best for you in terms of security as well as giving you the colour, design and practicality of use but we have been specifying and installing doors since 1986 so we have a pretty good idea what is best for you and your budget.

Garage door security is constantly evolving and outsourced specialised companies also offer very good upgrades for many of the doors including the lock barrels themselves. 'Anti lock bumping' and 'anti lock snapping' features are available from certain lock companies for those of you who have heard of this practice and require real security.

Of course many of the high quality electric operators now available offer very high levels of security not only in the mechanics but also the electronics now used. More options are becoming available all the time from leading manufacturers.

Call The Garage Door Centre for expert advice on all aspects of security for garage doors including physical security products that we also supply for garage windows and side doors.