January 24, 2008
Cheap Latch Could be Deadly
The other day my wife was leaving the house and the door wouldn't open. I thought she was kidding, but when I went down the stairs and turned the handle back and forth, it wouldn't open for me, either.
Eventually she left through the garage while I attempted to fix the problem. I took the lock apart, and discovered that the latch portion had worn out, so that when you turned the handle, the "cam" did not draw the "slide" and nothing happened (Note: I'm not a locksmith so I'm making up my own terminology here...). I took a closer look at the part and was dismayed to see it was made from plastic and flimsy metal.
Yikes! What if the house had been on fire?
I replaced the part with a slightly sturdier-looking one from Rona (albeit still stamped metal and plastic), and remain a bit unnerved by the sensation of not having been able to open our door to get out of our house!
