LOCKSMITH SERVICE

uPVC Door Won’t Lock? Door Realignment

If you are lifting the handle hard, leaning on the door, or pulling it towards you before the key will turn, your door is not locking as it should — and it is almost always the door that has moved rather than the lock. Some doors drop over time and some move with the weather. Either way the result is the same, and so is the fix. It is the most common call we get that is not an emergency. We realign uPVC and composite doors so they close and lock the way they were meant to.

Is it the door, or is it the lock? A thirty-second test

Open the door wide, so it is hanging on its hinges and touching nothing. Now lift the handle and turn the key.

If it locks freely with the door open, the mechanism is fine. The problem is alignment — the hooks and rollers are no longer meeting their keeps in the frame. That is an adjustment.

If it will not lock even with the door open — the handle will not lift, or it lifts but the key will not turn — the gearbox inside the door has failed. That is a replacement mechanism rather than an adjustment.

Either way, stop forcing it. A gearbox that is halfway to failing can shear completely, and that leaves you either locked out of your own house or locked inside it.

Signs a door has dropped

• You lift the handle harder than you used to
• You have to pull or lean on the door before the key will turn
• The gap down the lock side is wider at one end than the other
• The door catches on the frame or scuffs the threshold
• There are rub marks on the frame
• It was fine all summer and started sticking in the autumn

Why a stiff door matters more than it looks

A multipoint lock is designed to engage with almost no resistance. Once the door has dropped even a few millimetres, the hooks and rollers no longer line up with their keeps, and every single time you lock the door you are forcing the mechanism past that misalignment. The door still works, so it is easy to live with for months. What is happening underneath is that the gearbox is being worn out early, and a gearbox failing is a much bigger job than an adjustment.

What realignment actually involves

Realignment is hinge adjustment, keep adjustment and packing, done in the right order and checked with the door under its own weight rather than held. Most doors have more adjustment available in them than people realise. It is a fraction of the cost of a new door, and it takes an hour or so rather than a day.

If the gearbox has already gone

Sometimes we arrive and the mechanism has failed rather than shifted. A photograph of the strip down the edge of the door will usually tell us the make of the gearbox, which is a useful start — but the size cannot be established that way. It has to come out of the door and be measured. That is why we carry a large stock of the common gearboxes in a range of sizes, so that in most cases the right one is already in the van and the job finishes on the first visit rather than becoming a wait for parts.

Composite doors behave differently from uPVC

A composite door is heavier, so it tends to drop on its hinges rather than flex, and the sag shows up at the top corner furthest from the hinges. uPVC moves more with temperature, which is why a door that was fine all summer starts catching in November and eases off again in spring. Both are adjustable. Knowing which you have tells us where to start.

After bad weather

One of our busiest weeks of the year is always the one after a serious blow. Wind loads a door and its frame hard, and a frame that has shifted even slightly leaves the hooks no longer meeting their keeps. People assume the lock has broken. Usually it has not — the geometry has moved, and that is a realignment rather than a replacement. It is worth having it checked rather than being sold a new door on the strength of one bad night.

When a door genuinely does need replacing

Occasionally it does: when the frame itself has failed, or the panel has delaminated, or the door has been forced and is out of true. We will tell you plainly when that is the case. We would far rather adjust a door that can be adjusted than sell you one you do not need, and a replacement company is not always the best placed to give you that answer.