Key-only locks are a fire hazard waiting to happen
The pros and cons of choosing thumb-turn or push-button locks
I don’t always hit it off with everyone I meet or am related to, but there are a handful of people I’ve never gotten into an argument with or even a disagreement. One of those people is my late maternal grandmother. I can only recall two times when she was upset with me: the first time was being exhausted that me and my older brother wouldn’t stop arguing when we spent the night at her house, and the second time was because of a lock.
During my elementary school years, she’d gotten really sick and came to live in our home for a while. She mainly stayed in my bed. And as a latchkey kid, I was used to coming and going as I pleased. Half the time, I was outside playing, at school or laser-focused on my Barbie doll itinerary, so I didn’t mind sharing my room. But when my mother, my father, my brother and I were all at separate destinations one day, I took most of the blame for one thing: taking my keys with me.
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I was initially confused. Why would I, as a latchkey kid, not take my keys with me when I left home? I’d lost at least three sets of keys or forgotten them in the open slot of my desk at school over the years. Finally, when I got a handle on keeping house keys in a safe space, I was baffled at my grandmother for saying I locked her in the house. She figured out that she was locked in when someone rang the doorbell, and she couldn’t answer the door.
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It was the first time the four of us realized that we’d been so used to using our keys to get in and out of the house and never quite thought about what it would be like for someone else — specifically someone who wasn’t comfortable going to the one door (in our basement) that did not require a key to exit and enter. The problem with that door? There was a Labrador mix on the other side of it.
I don’t recall what our resolution was. My grandmother eventually returned home to her own apartment, but I think my parents either got her a set of keys or I was instructed to leave my house keys behind until she left. She would then let me in. I just had to ring the doorbell, which was annoying considering I’d grown comfortable with my lock independence.
But the first time I fully understood how scary it could be to be locked inside of a home was when I first bought a condo and realized my storm door could only lock and unlock with a key. Even worse, the strike jam and the lock were in this awkward space where I could almost get a splinter from the wooden door every single time I turned the key in the lock.
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Now imagine a fire breaks out, and this is the closest exit. I’d now have to worry about making sure the key was nearby to open the storm door (or leave it unlocked all the time, which was out of the question considering half of the back door was made of glass — and I’d already seen how a burglar gets through a transom window) and deal with splinters.
This was all the reason I needed to hire someone to install thumb-turn or button locks to replace the key lock. This way, I could lock the door from the inside with my hand and lock it with a key from the outside. Anything else is a fire hazard. But when I switched my locks, a neighbor completely disagreed with my decision.