I’ve been in a number of apartments and homes in my life most of which these days have a separate deadbolt with a key lock on the outside and a keyless throw on the inside, single cylinder with a thumb latch in locksmith jargon. Most – if not all – of them the bolt is thrown with the thumb latch vertical and retracted with the thumb latch horizontal.
This seems counter intuitive to me. Is there a mechanical or traditional reason for this?
From the pics at your link, it looks to me like the bolt is retracted when the thumb latch is vertical and thrown when it’s horizontal, which makes more intuitive sense (see the last picture at the bottom in particular). The locks I’ve always had look more like the one below, where the top of the thumb latch is angled towards the latch when it’s locked, and away from it when it’s retracted.
The last time I installed one of these, I could take off the thumb latch and rotate it 90 degrees to show it horizontal when locked, the way I prefer it. I mentally associate it with “barring the door.”
I just installed new doorknobs and deadbolts on our house and I could install the thumb latch for the deadbolt in either configuration. However, I could not do the same for the doorknob: vertical orientation locked the doorknob, horizontal unlocked it.
So I installed the deadbolt so that it had the same orientation. That is, both the deadbolt and the doorknob are locked when the latch is in the vertical position.
FTR I have never seen a doorknob that did not lock by positioning the thumb latch vertical. So my WAG is that deadbolts are oriented that was as well simply because that is what people are familiar with – vertical is locked, horizontal is unlocked. So your theory of it being the “traditional” way is likely correct, but I’m not a locksmith so take that for what it’s worth.
When I put a lock on a door I put the thumb twist horizontal when locked. I did this in my home and do it is any office area that I put a lock in. It is easier to look at the lock and know if it is locked or not.
I’ve never installed one and not knowing there was a choice, just assumed that was the way they came.
This was the first and only time I’ve ever installed deadbolts, so I dont know how standard across the industry having that choice is.
FWIW, in the condo i moved into a year and a half ago, the locked position is horizontal. I have no preconception for which is more natural.
When we moved into our house, my wife made me disassemble the knobsets and rotate the little thingamajigs so that they were all in a horizontal position when locked. All of them used a rectangular shaft so I could rotate them 90 degrees. She was really freaked out that some of them were locked when vertical and others were locked when horizontal. Didn’t bother me a bit.
I am always surprised at how flimsy the ‘standard’ American locks are. The ones illustrated above are not very secure at all.
We are not especially security conscious and live in a low crime area, but I replaced our front door many years ago and it came with a much better lock than that. For example, it needs a key to lock it from the inside. The idea is that if a thief breaks in through a small window, they can’t use the front door to carry our goods away.
Those are considered extremely dangerous in case of fire.
The thumb latch is most often verticle when unlocked because it’s mimicking a key.
Just checked my front and side door, both are horizontal when locked. My back door deadbolt pivots between about 60 and 300 degrees (neither vertical or horizontal) at rest. It points closest to the jamb when locked.
There are other ways of escaping.
I guess it’s all about balancing risk. We have fire and CO2 alarms and AFAIK these locks are the ones preferred by insurance companies.
Than the door? While in a panic with smoke alarm blaring and smoke obscuring the way? Fire departments warn against them for good reason.
I have the key hanging near the door (but out of sight/reach of a broken window) on a kitchen cupboard.
And most houses in the US are made of wood, and burn easily.
In countries where houses are mostly concrete, the customs are different.
I had a condo with a double cylinder deadbolt in the door and a window right next to it. I hung a key on a nail next to the door on the other side of the door, out of reach from the window.
I’m glad I never had to test it while panicked in a fire, though.
It’s not really a British vs American thing. You can certainly get secure locks over here – in fact there is a whole range of differing qualities and security levels. We had security locks in the previous house, apparently because the previous owner was a paranoid type. The keys had the sawtooth ridges of ordinary keys, except that the ridges were angled in various different directions. This made the locks very hard if not impossible to pick. The keys could only be cut by a licensed locksmith, and supposedly only if you had the appropriate locksmith-issued ID.
Anyway, one of the doors had the kind of double-cylinder lock that you describe, needing a key from the inside as well as outside. But it had an ingenious solution for those who didn’t want this feature, or used it only rarely. There was a special key, whose body matched the same key used on the outside and the other doors, but whose head resembled a thumb latch. Thus when the key was inserted on the inside, it was effectively just an ordinary thumb latch deadbolt, but it could be removed when desired.
Many, possibly most, houses over here have the simple latch shown in the link. The internal lock is usually a simple lever which no doubt works the same way. Insurance companies consider them to offer the same level of protection as using querty as a password.