There are spare keys hidden around the place, all in keypad-controlled lock-boxes. More often than not I lock myself out of the house but in the garage, which is why there is a set of keys there as well.
Oddly, we have started throwing the deadbolts at night. Bears open the doors on our cars, so… With the lever type house door handles, it’s an easy swipe of the paw, and they would be inside. Breaking down a door would at least give us a warning.
When we bought our house back in the 1980s we didn’t change the locks at all. About 15 years ago I accidentally locked myself out. A stone from the garden enabled me to break a pane in the front door and open it.
A week later we had a new door and frame. Nothing is totally secure, but I suspect that the cops, even with their standard door opener would have trouble getting in.
Short answer: No.
After [events] we armored up far beyond the typical American home. I’m certain we couldn’t break into our house, at least not in the normal sense that the OP is asking, Given an acetylene torch or some decent angle-grinders we could eventually batter our way inside.
All the doors and windows have steel framing and welded bars, and the locks are high grade (supposedly) unpickable, with a minimum of 3 layers/locks at each entry point. Normal (daytime) entry requires a minimum of 3 “keys” (metal/electronic/code), and at nighttime slide/pin/bar locks ensure no non-destructive entry is possible. One serious breakin attempt has been made. This nearly destroyed a steel security door, caving it partially inward and prying out a few feet of the surrounding frame, along with the concrete threshold. Given the damage, we assume crowbars and probably a sledgehammer were used, but it held up.
Assuming the house was normally locked and I arrived with nothing at all, I could eventually get in. But it requires gathering the necessary stuff via a complex scavenger hunt, with half the steps not even at the house.
I mean, you could get into almost any house with a sledge hammer and enough time. But that’s going to attract attention.
It’s the people who say they could open the back door with a credit card that i wonder, why bother locking?
The only doorlatches that are openable with credit cards are the ones made in the 1960s and before. Anything modern doesn’t have that vulnerability.
My take has always been to not have a locking doorknob. Only a locking deadbolt. If you get outside with keys inside you can’t lock the door at all. The only way to become locked out is to lock the door, then lose your keys someplace in the great outdoors.
For my last residence I switched to an electronic keypad deadbolt. It has a backup key, but normally you just need the code to get in. And it can take multiple codes, so you can have one for your family, a different one for e.g. the housekeeper that you can change when you get a new housekeeper, etc. Super convenient. Can recommend.
A blues song in the making
Apartments are often harder to break into than single family homes. When my husband’s uncle dropped off the face if6 the earth, and the police decided to break into his apartment, it took a locksmith more than 3 hours to get them in.
Uncle turned out to be in a hospital no one had checked, and was really pissed about the damage to his door.
Nah. I replaced that doorknob within the last five years and it’s definitely openable.
I lock it because it would deter a casual attempt and it’s not obvious that it’s easy to open with a card. And even using a card takes some time and finessing, especially if you’ve never done it before. Once you’ve turned opening the door into a multi step process more substantial than “turn knob”, you’ve decreased the number of people who want to try it and risk being caught from the outside or alerting anyone inside.
That said, it’s a pretty safe neighborhood and, outside of a string of opportunistic car break-ins maybe seven years ago (likely kids grabbing from unlocked garages/cars), not much property theft going on.
If I somehow got locked out of my house I wouldn’t have to break in. There’s a key with a magnet attached to a metal item (not a vehicle) on the property for just such an occasion.
When Dad was still alive, and I still worked 30 miles away daily, that key used to live in a metal bird feeder just in case someone from hospice needed to help him in event that he was unable to open the door himself.
We keep the front of our house locked most of the time, especially if we’re out in the back yard or upstairs, but we only lock the back when we’re out and at night. I could break in (and have) in a pinch, but it involves climbing onto a second-story balcony and shimmying through a bathroom window. After the last time had to do that, I stashed a key in the toolshed. If you can find it, you’re welcome to come on in.
Yes. Fast and dirty because I don’t feel like slogging back to the car would be to stagger around the corner of the barn and down a level and break a window [not optimal] Normal reaction would be to swear a lot, then get out the lock picks and pick the lock. Back when we had dogs, I kept a key on the collar of my 130 pound wolf hybrid - we had a LARGE doggy flap on the door so Llugh could go in and out at will, so in a pinch I could even crawl in the doggie door [and get facewashed all the while]
mrAru can also pick locks, but I really would not break in, he has very specific sounds and patterns he makes [and he also calls out, whistles and sings around the barn, he is not a quiet man] and being handicapped and alone, I tend to be willing to unlimber a gun and be defensive. And yes, back when I did it for a living, I was willing to and did shoot back more than once. I am a good shot. Just saying.
I have a spare key hidden in the shed, which is locked with a combination lock, so as long as I don’t forget the combination I theoretically shouldn’t get locked out.
But if I somehow didn’t have that, the side door to the garage doesn’t have a deadbolt, so I could probably pry that open if I could get hold of a crowbar or something.
I don’t want to live behind bars.
Plus, I’m not really worried about break-ins, besides the occasional murder or cop killing, this is a pretty quiet neighborhood. We’ve lived in the area for over 30 years and I can count the break-ins I’ve heard of with the fingers of one hand. Property theft is more common, but that is usually small, easily portable items that have been left outside.
I did get locked out. I damaged my back door prying it open. Replacing the exterior door cost me almost $300. I learned my lesson and hid a key outside.
I have used that hidden key several times in the past 20 years.
Most of us are past this point, but …
If you have a key hidden outside and you have kids, you don’t have a key hidden outside. You just mistakenly think you do.
Sure. Numeric keypad on the front door, with backup key access. If the battery is dead in that, and I somehow don’t have my backup key, I used to be a locksmith, and I have a set of picks stashed in the car, and another in a location known only to me. If picking the lock fails, I keep a cordless power drill in the car, too, that can drill out the cylinder.
I currently live in an apartment. I could get into the building through the simple expedient of knocking on a neighbor’s window, but I don’t think I could get into my unit without significant damage to the door. Alternately, there are the windows, but I’d need a ladder or something equivalent to reach the second floor.
In the house where I grew up, yeah, probably. There’s a largeish ground floor window that’s secured only with a hook through an eyebolt. I’m pretty sure it’s been painted closed, but I could probably slip a knife blade through and work it open.
Then it’s likely not installed correctly. A card should not be able to open a properly installed door latch. If there’s just a bit too much space between the latch and strike plate, then, yeah, it’ll open. The latch itself should stop about a third of the way and be resistant to being retracted farther. The door at my university newspaper were incorrectly installed this way — just a hair too much space and two of the doors were card openable. The others were the same locks, but correctly installed.
Key is to hide it high enough. Or not. We never screwed with my dad’s hidden keys except to get in. And he had a two step process. The hidden key was a key to the garage, and then in the garage you had to know where the hidden house key was.