Didn’t we have a poster here not too long ago that got locked out of the garage (I think there was only access to the garage through the garage door) resulting in the catch 22 of I need to open it to fix it but I can’t open it to fix it?
No it isn’t. It is far easier to go break one of my windows than it is to get into my garage door.
But how do you get into the closed garage? It’s not a trivial task to bypass a typical overhead door. Once you’ve done that, and have unfettered access to a garage full of tools/blunt instruments, the privacy of the garage door and the time that provides, someting as silly as an entry door lockset isn’t going to keep you out of the house.
The best you, the homeowner, can hope for is to moderately inconvenience the burglar. By the point at which he’s at your garage access door, the hard/conspicuous work has been done, and he’s already committed.
From this thread I’ve learned that I need to start locking the bedroom door when I leave home. Because once the burglars have bypassed the first locked door they apparently give up when presented with a second one.
Yeah, I’ll just point to my previous post about why people who think the door between the attached garage and the house adds any sort of additional security beyond a few seconds that don’t really matter once the burglar is in the garage where he can conceal himself by shutting the previously compromised door or window.
The post up-thread about locking it when you’re home actually does make sense. It would give you a bit of warning you might not get otherwise. But when you’re not home, it doesn’t do any good at all, really.
My house has a detached garage. Houses in this part of Pittsburgh tend to have those, since they predate everyone having cars (my house was built around 1927) and are on small lots (so attaching a garage to the side of the house wasn’t an option). It used to be that the only way into the garage was through the overhead door. Once I had experienced that failing on me once, I wanted a side door into the garage. I now have one.
At an apartment where I used to live in California, I once had a manual overhead garage door break on me and refuse to open.
Overhead garage doors- I don’t trust 'em.
House keys can often be used to open more than one door into the house. If you have more than one door into the house, no door is a single point of failure. Garage door openers, OTOH, tend to open one and only one door, and so are a single point of failure.
Keys to my mom’s house do not exist. People don’t lock any doors Where I’m from.
Also, you can buy certain locks that allow you to change the key, so all the locks on my house and my in-laws are the same. No more multiple keys!
What town is that, and what is your mom’s exact address? Christmas is right around the corner and this could really help me with my shopping.
We had the door connecting our house and garage taken out and replaced by a solid wall because I couldn’t stand the thought of someone breaking into our house that way. We might have to go outside the house to put our garbage away now, but we couldn’t park in there anyway - the garage is too small for our van if we want to store anything else in there at all.
Seriously, how the fuck did you think anyone was going to interpret that as “it takes 90 minutes for the locksmith to show up”?
First of all, your post didn’t mention a fucking locksmith.
And unless you have what I’d regard as an unusual expectation of occasionally needing a locksmith in such situations, what’s the odds that you’re going to have the number of a locksmith on your phone or otherwise easily accessible when you’re locked out?
If you’ve got such an expectation, wouldn’t it be easier just to keep a spare front door key in your glove compartment?
And if not, it would take most people locked out of their house - maybe not you, but certainly most people - most of 90 minutes just to find the number of a local locksmith, who might or might not be there in an additional 90 minutes.
If the common wall(s) between your attached garage and the rest of your house is (are) typical drywall-over-stud construction, getting in is pretty easy. If someone has gained access to the garage, busting through some drywall and getting into the house is trivial. The door may have been harder to get through than the rest of the wall.
RTFFirefly, maybe I missed the post you are referring to. But, that’s the post I assumed you were talking about (since you quoted it originally) and he does mention a locksmith.
I read that post to be saying that once a decade the power will happen to be out right when a person comes home, and then he has to wait 90 minutes for a locksmith to show up. Honestly, between calling information and smartphones I think you are overestimating the amount of time it would take the average person to contact a locksmith. I have no idea if 90 minutes is a good estimate for how long it would take for a locksmith to show up, though.
I have never lived in a house where I parked the car in the garage or had an automatic garage opener, so I can’t really speak to whether or not it is a good idea to go out without keys in that situation.
I do think it was quite an overreaction for the landlord to bitch out the OP over locking a door that was always locked before. Although, I don’t know that it’s that outrageous to expect the door to be unlocked from now on. (I’m assuming this is an interior door that leads from the house to the garage.)
Are you retarded? Seriously, are you actually fucking retarded?
Fact remains that it’s still only one key on a ring that probably already has 2+ for the average person.
The only real defense is being paranoid of being mugged and having it taken, but that’s a bit of a stretch.
There is nothing to defend.
Where’s that? Mayberry?
Yeah, I’m a big fan of the Kwikset SmartLock line. But even if you don’t have one of the locks that you yourself can rekey, better key copiers and locksmiths can rekey cylinders for you. My local hardware store has a guy who can rekey cylinders to allow single key use.
Carrying your house key is all well and good until some random trouble maker decides it will be funny to squirt epoxy in the door locks up and down the block.
This is exactly why I don’t use door locks-- you’re just an easy target. Instead, my house has no doors or windows and to enter it, I actually shimmy down the chimney. Once down, I meet a solid barricade where I have to solve 4 complex logic puzzles and name each of Angelina Jolie’s children (in birth order). Then, once the barricade opens, it reveals a tiny badger. Badger gets ceremoniously sacrificed— then I can enter my home.
You know, I figure you can really never be too safe. Sure, I could use my garage door-- but the power might go out! That’s too frustrating to even consider, so I just had that shit removed. I’m telling you guys: my system is flawless. FLAWLESS.