Many people believe that roller garage doors are secure due to their design. For example, there are no handles on the outside, nothing can be seen that can be picked, and the curtain rolls away out of sight into a box above the opening. Therefore, what can be attacked?
This line of thinking is not necessarily wrong. Roller doors are more secure than the traditional up-and-over doors, which can be forced open at the corners, and have a central lock that is easily defeated. However, there are many factors that buyers do not consider when there is a gap between a roller door that seems secure and one that actually is.
It’s the Curtain, not the Lock
Most assaults on roller doors do not go for the lock. Instead, they go for the curtain. The goal is to pry the bottom rail up and either slip under or, more usually, force the individual laths to the side to either get them out of the guide channels. Once a couple of laths are out of the guides, the door is no longer rigid.
The features worth paying attention to resist that kind of action. End locks, which are sometimes referred to as wind locks, are small clips installed on the lath ends to stop sliding under pressure. Although they were primarily designed for wind resistance on larger industrial doors, they also have a secondary purpose of locking the door into position; they do, however, relatively very little. They are a feature worth asking about, because many cheaper domestic options do not have them.
The laths themselves matter too. A double skinned, foam filled, lath is of a very different order to one that is single skinned lath of thin steel that dints with a good hard leant on with a crowbar. The insulated ones are also not primarily about keeping a temperature differential.
How it locks Depends on how it opens
This is where the manual roller door and the electric roller door start to differ.
A manual roller door usually relies on locking bolts built into the bottom rail that are meant to throw themselves into the lath guides. This is fine as long as they are thrown every time. The weakness in this case is human not mechanical.
Electric roller doors differ in many ways from conventional doors. For one, most quality motorized systems use the motor to hold the roller curtain. The best systems will incorporate an automatic locking or anti-lift function to secure the curtain immediately upon closure. There is a distinct advantage here given that users cannot forget to lock the curtain. However, the motor’s quality and installation will dictate how secure the roller door actually is. So, what is usually a convenience feature of the door operator, will serve as an assurance of the door’s security.
There is one aspect that is most definitely overlooked. Consider the possibility of a power cut. All electric doors must include a manual override. From what I have seen, the security level of manual overrides vary immensely between companies. Some have secure and well-designed overrides, while others include a manual override that makes the electric locking mechanism completely moot. Insist that the installer demonstrate the override mechanism.
The elements that are usually ignored
The door guides must be mounted to something solid. A strong door that is mounted to weak or crumbling masonry will be limited to what the guides are mounted to. This is something that is extremely common in older UK garages.
Check the remote too. A quality, modern remote will use a technology called rolling codes, which ensures that the remote and door are completely secure, since the transmitted signal will change with each use. If your potential future door remote is still using fixed codes, leave.
A secure roller garage door that has been properly specified is actually one of the most secure types of garage door. The problem with the term “roller door” is that is provides very little information. Two doors that appear the same from the driveway can actually be built to very different levels of security and you often find this out at the worst possible time. When you are assessing the options, try to consider a provider that has roller garage doors that explains the security features, lath construction, locking, and security ratings as opposed to leaving you to make an assumption.