Advices for choosing security doors

Which brand of security doors is best? It is difficult to give a definite answer to this question. Once upon a time, buyers with means preferred doors from Europe, in particular Italy and Germany, and thrifty people installed doors made in China. But today the situation on the market has changed.

Almost 90% of all steel doors are currently manufactured by London companies using modern European technologies and components. The remaining 10% are doors manufactured by large Chinese companies, as well as products from Israeli, Italian, British, German and Polish firms.

A good entrance door to an apartment must meet several requirements at once. The main quality of the door is reliability and resistance to burglary, both to power and intellectual ones. In addition, the door should protect from the cold (which is especially important in our latitudes), drafts and noise in the entrance.

The strength and durability of all parts are also important – the owner must be sure that the door will not jam or warp, and the lock will not break at the most inopportune moment. Finally, good quality front doors should be pleasing to the eye. Let’s consider each selection criterion in more detail.

There are 13 classes of burglary resistance of doors

There are 13 classes of burglary resistance of doors, but ordinary entrance doors (even the most expensive ones) rarely rise above the fourth class. A higher class is required for doors of banking institutions and vaults. The first class of burglary resistance is doors that can be opened by any means, except for the use of physical force and the simplest tools.

Doors of the second class can be broken only with the help of special electrical means. Doors of the third class include those that can only be affected by power tools with a power of more than 500 watts. And burglary-resistant and, moreover, bullet-proof doors are already the fourth class.

Good quality entrance doors

Good quality entrance doors are made of two sheets of steel, between which there are stiffening ribs – at least two vertical and one horizontal. The more of them, the more reliable and heavier the door. An important role is played by the thickness of the steel from which the canvas is made.

Usually the value ranges from 1 to 2 mm, very rarely – about 6 mm. Steel less than 1 mm thick is unreliable and not suitable for the manufacture of entrance doors. The optimal sheet thickness, which does not weigh down the door leaf and ensures high reliability, is 1.5 mm. In the most expensive models, manufacturers install an additional steel sheet.

However, the thickness of the steel sheet is not yet a guarantee of reliability. A weak cheap lock reduces this advantage to zero, as a specialist can open it in a matter of seconds. The best front doors are equipped with several locks, at least two, and they should be of different types. The main lock must be equipped with bolts for locking in several directions.

Safety

The first thing you should pay attention to when choosing an entrance door is security. Moreover, it is important not only the presence of several locks, but also their quality. Safety is also affected by the thickness of the outer metal sheet. It must be at least 1.5 mm, otherwise it will not be difficult for robbers to open such a door. A door for a private house can have a leaf 2-3 mm thick. It will not be superfluous to have three loops and an additional anti-removable mechanism.

Thermal insulation

In any case, a large amount of heat is lost through the front door. This is especially true when choosing a door for a private house or apartment with an unheated entrance. That is why when choosing it is important to pay attention to the thermal insulation properties of the door.

This property depends on the internal accumulation of plants. The best application would be a canvas with mineral wool inside. Additionally, foil insulation is laid around the perimeter. Thermal break door installation in towel and box. This door is very heavy. Its cost will be more than twice as compared to a standard door.

Finishing

For many consumers, appearance is a priority when choosing a door. Both exterior and interior decoration can be almost any. The inner lining can imitate wood trim or be completely metal. In addition, quite often the inside of the door is trimmed with a large mirror. Exterior finishes are distinguished by both the quality of the material and the texture. It is important to remember that the door for a private house must have a special coating that will protect it from external weather influences. In addition to the above points, it is important to choose the right door size. A standard metal door will always be cheaper than a custom-made door. For this reason, it is sometimes more profitable to widen or block a doorway a little, than to make a door to order.

Which locks should I choose?

An additional lock could be somewhat simpler. Cheap locks should be avoided – they are not only easy to open, but often break. The best locks for front doors are produced under the brands Cisa, MOTURA and others. You can increase the protective qualities of the door by installing an armor plate on the lock.

The latest word in access control is biometric locks, which can only be opened by placing a finger on the reader. They are easily integrated into the “smart home” system and are able to remember up to 99 fingerprints. Any intelligent hacking methods are powerless against such locks, and the owner will never have to worry about losing the keys.

These locks allow you to control access, so that the owner, at his discretion, can register a new person who can open the door, or restrict access to someone who no longer wants to see. On one of the prints, you can program an alarm signal that instantly arrives at the security console. For emergencies, the possibility of opening with a full turn of a cylinder key of high reliability is provided.

To sum up

A good front door to an apartment is not a whim, but a necessity. It is she who protects tenants and property from intruders, keeps warm and gives a literal meaning to the expression “my house is my fortress.”

The London door market is relatively young, although the situation in the turbulent 1990s caused the rapid development of this business. Domestic manufacturers of entrance doors have learned a lot from their foreign counterparts, and today doors are no different in quality from Italian or German ones.

Source of information: secure-house.co.uk