How to childproof a sliding glass door that can be unlocked and locked inside and out
My house has a sliding glass door as the main entrance and I need a solution to have it secure from tiny hands. My problem is it needs to be able to unlock and lock on both sides of the door so a pin drop or cross bar won’t work.
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Not being able to exit your home in an emergency without a key is a serious safety problem. In most places it is not permitted.
International Residential Code R311.4.4 “All egress doors shall be readily openable from the side from which egress is to be made without the use of a key or special knowledge or effort”. Most local codes are derived from this.
Yes this is why I need it to be accessible on both sides of the door. 1 for emergency access and 2 so I and my partner can unlock it coming home from work if the other is sleeping edit added missing word
I guess I didn’t understand what you were describing. When we moved in to our house, the previous owners had a deadbolt that locked with a key on the inside instead of a thumb turn, and it was the only way to lock the door. This is a pretty bad idea since it creates a potential situation where you’re stuck inside your house, or have to find another exit. In some emergencies, seconds count. Even if you know how to open the door, you might have someone over who doesn’t, which is why fire codes are the way they are. Someone unfamiliar with the setup, panicking, in the dark, in a room full of smoke, needs to be able to escape without solving a puzzle.
Because I already had experience with having to replace that lock with an appropriate one for an exit door, I jumped straight to the assumption that when you said “lock on both sides”, you were talking about a key, and not just a childproof latch of some kind. I have the privilege of not living with anyone who is a flight risk, so it’s easy for me to just dismiss it as unsafe. I looked at some of the solutions out there and they seem to be designed to stop toddlers with no dexterity, not an autistic person determined to turn all the things. Sorry if my answer was unhelpful; people are injured or killed every day because they created a situation they didn’t realize was hazardous until it was too late. My intention was only to prevent the downsides of locking the door this way from being overlooked.
To be completely honest my only solution might be to rip out the door and put in a regular door so normal child locks will work. With home and safety checks we will be subjected to, having the door requiring a key on both sides won’t work and will be flagged as a danger. Thank you for your response all input has been extremely helpful including your insight
We use a keyed backdoor to prevent visiting children from accessing the pool.
they asked for advice on a door to protect a child, not a lesson on municipal code. go out there and fix it yourself.
While they did, they cannot simply ignore municipal code with their solution.
Au contrere. one can simply ignore municipal code. happens often and everywhere, not to mention evrerwhere it doesn't exist. unless it's enforced, and that's the key. also, i'm not against building to code. just realistic.
Yes, and that's how people get killed in completely preventable ways.
Again, I am not against building to code. "Code" doesn't exist in much of the world, and sometimes the materials aren't available to make it possible.
Municipal code is usually to prevent people from dying. It's simply dumb to ignore it in a case like this.
you know what, for all builders and contractors: please build things in a way that people don't die. forgot about that part.
Right, better to let them burn alive in a fire instead of pointing that out, right?
Nope, that's on you. Go ahead, cyberpunk007, and explain how to survive.
This comment feels needlessly hostile.
That's because it is. These "why don't YOU do something about it" comments always are, I just don't get why people are so aggressive straight out of the starting block.
i'm sorry that I was too aggressive. I still feel that a lot of commenters were throwing shade where it didn't belong.