Locked out in St Kilda – a self closing / locking Security Door.

I turned up to a property in St Kilda late at night last week and though it was not quite as secure as your average crack dealer’s home in downtown LA… security was tight. Obvious surveillance system, well secured doors and windows – I was surprised and more than a little impressed. St Kilda properties are known for having good security… but this was taking it to another level. To add mystery to the job…. I was greeted by a scantily dressed young woman looking rather embarrassed out the front. This is not the first time this has happened, in fact I am greeted by people locked out of their homes in states of undress so often I’ve now ordered small and large robes our customers can put on during such emergencies.

As it turns out, the house had indeed once been rented by some rather salubrious characters who were using the house to run an “exotic indoor garden center” if you get my drift…. They were caught, packed off to gaol, and the landlord got to rent the house out with all this you beaut security stuff which had been installed by the previous tenants. The problem is the new tenant was not used to such uncompromising home security and just before going to be had gone out the front door to put her cat out…. only to get locked out by her own house which had a self closing, self locking front door. No alarm system… but this was a door that was meant to withstand a sledge hammer. It was bolted into the bricks. Likewise, all windows had similar security. No one was breaking in here too easily that’s for sure.

The door itself was a triple point lock door, so it locked at the top, middle and bottom of the door and the door itself probably weighed 50kilograms. Wowsers.

Now you don’t see a door like this every day… but faced with the skills of a TopLock locksmith I was inside in 10 minutes.

The moral of the story here is when you move into premises with increased security, or if you beef up the security of your own house… you need to change your mindset a little when it comes to maintaining your method of re entry into the house. That “I am so safe” feeling you get from looking at the inside of your locked door will quickly change to a feeling of “I am so screwed” as you see your front door lock itself as you are walking back from checking the mailbox…

1. Consider a keypad entry instead of keys. For starters, it’s much easier to lock your whole house at once, you don’t have to carry house keys and you will never be locked out again.
2. If you don’t want to go keyless, stash a key somewhere. Not under the mat, and not where someone can see you retrieving it. Somewhere clever.

But all’s well that ends well…. operation Toplock Bathrobe begins today, I will get back to you with some pictures when they arrive.