With most bifolding doors fitted at the back of the house, bifolding door security is uppermost in the mind of homeowners. The good news is that modern bifolding doors come with excellent security, designed to keep you, your home and your possessions safe. But what does this security on folding sliding doors actually mean? In this article, we explain the hardware and design features of quality-made folding sliding doors and how these give you peace of mind about bifolding door security.

Bifolding door security and why it matters to us and you

As well as protecting your home, bifolding door security matters because it’s an essential part of choosing the best bifold door for a property renovation project and what makes a quality product, like the Cortizo system we use.

The nature of a bifolding door is such that they range from two up to more than ten panels. Making sure these large door sets say safe is an important part of their design. Bifolding door security is therefore about much more than just a high quality door lock. The entire door design, all the hardware and even the glass are all key components in making the doors you buy stay locked when required and protect your home.

How secure are bifolding doors?

The answer is very secure, and our doors also have independent testing to demonstrate their security with a PAS24 rating.

Specifically for our bifolding doors product, these come with a multi-point locking system, that’s better than a sliding door, typically only locking on the one side. The locks we provide is called AluLock – a system using a double hook lock design, engaging the lock of your new bifolding doors in six places. Not only is it safe and secure, but also resilient and robust.

Added to this are the top and bottom shoot bolts on the intermediate panels. These securely engage in the head and track, further adding to the bifolding door security. After engaging the multipoint lock, you can lock the doors via the high security star rated key cylinder. These door cylinders are of the highest quality and it’s also possible to obtain higher security cylinders with more secure keys. Adding to your peace of mind, these key cylinders meet British Standards and are designed to resist drilling, picking and snapping. There should be no issue with your insurance company either.

It’s easy to operate the lock on bifolding doors. Lifting the handle engages the six locking points, with the key cylinder carrying out the final locking operation.

What about doors locking and unlocking from outside?

Many of our customers want to lock and unlock their doors from the outside. In this scenario, the doors unlock via the key, and pushing the handle down disengages the locks. Therefore, there’s no loss of security when configuring your bifolds so that they lock and unlock from the outside.

The handles and hinges on bifolding doors

Even with a high security lock, bifolding door security also requires high quality handles and hinges. A quality-made and well-designed product comes with heavy-duty handles and slim, attractive but secure door hinges.

The quality of a bifold handle is essential to the door security and these too are designed to resist attack, as many opportunistic burglars consider the handle as a weak point. A quality product has strong metal handles, with equally resilient bolts, a guard over the key cylinder, lock plates designed to stay in place, and other good design features. The handles we provide are also extensively cycle tested.

Door hinges, like the handles, are designed to be resilient, bearing in mind they are visible from the outside on most door sets. You’ll find ours made from strong metals and with a design that protects from attack.

Why glass is essential for bifolding door security

Many of our customers are unaware of what a key role glass plays in the overall security of the door set. As standard, you get toughened glass. This is incredibly hard to break and all doors are required to have ‘safety glass’ of this type.

Where you want even better security, consider laminated glass. Laminated glass comprises a plastic interlayer between the sheets. Should it break, the glass holds in place. Laminated glass is different to toughened glass that shatters into thousands of blunt and harmless pieces.

Laminated glass is one of the best upgrades to your bifolding doors and is frequently used in the security testing of door and window products. Design your doors with triple glazing and the security of the glass gets even better!

Finally, the aluminium profiles for even more bifolding door security

One of the benefits of aluminium is its inherent strength, with slim sightlines. Stronger than wood and PVCu, aluminium has for many years demonstrated its superiority. Strong, safe, reliable bifolding doors with all the advantages of modern insulated aluminium profiles.

With the aluminium profiles comes excellent engineering, sealing and reliability. The aluminium profiles, glass, hardware and our quality manufacturing, all create a bifolding door product that’s designed to be functional, reliable, beautiful and above all, secure.

High security bifolds for builders and homeowners to buy direct.

At AL-Bifolds, we make quality folding sliding doors, single and double doors designed with high security features, strong aluminium and quality safety glass. Contact us today to see how we can help with your next home improvement project.