Thursday was another busy day for Alan Hickman, a Bournemouth-based locksmith who works in the area around the New Forest (“though I’m currently dodging the bit between Ringwood and Eastleigh because that’s closed because of the forest fires”). Speaking on his way to see a man who can’t close his patio doors – “probably because they’ve got some expansion issues” – he then has a callout to see an elderly woman who needs a lockbox installed for her carer, before visiting a customer in Westbourne “to sort another composite door that can’t lock”. Such cases of sticking, unopenable or unlockable doors are much more common at the moment, says Hickman, due, like so much else, to the very hot weather across much of the UK over the past few months.
Hickman has worked with LockRite, one of the UK’s largest networks of uniformed locksmiths, for 14 years but this summer has “definitely brought a significant increase” in heat-related callouts. It’s a pattern repeated across the country, most noticeably in areas where temperatures have been highest, according to Steffan George, the managing director of the Master Locksmith Association, a not-for-profit trade body. A recent MLA Facebook post on the subject, entitled “Why is my uPVC door difficult to lock?”, got tens of thousands of views, about 50 times the usual traffic for its posts, presumably as a result of people Googling exactly that question.
Doors may be made of different materials but each of them can be affected by extreme temperatures, thanks to the simple physics most people learned in school. Heat can cause many products to expand, including the form of plastic that makes up uPVC and parts of composite doors. That can cause doors to drop and move, putting strain on locks that can become stiffer or impossible to operate, he says.
Hales would normally do four or five heat-related door adjustments a week – currently that figure is about 10, he says. And all that happens is people put force on the key, the key snaps something inside the lock and then the bill starts to escalate.” When temperatures start to drop going into autumn and winter, a new set of problems may arise, he says. Plastic gets harder and more brittle, and poorly sealed timber starts to swell.
We just force the door shut or force the locks.’ So that’s a big part of it – people not taking care of their doors.”
Extract — continue reading at the source.
