Secure a Sliding Door Track

Before you start

• Try lifting the sliding panel upward with the door closed. If it rises noticeably in the track, the lift path is the weakness and a bar alone does not close it.
• Check whether this door is a way out of the house. On many homes it is the second exit from the ground floor, which changes how a bar should be used.
• Clean the track. Most sliding doors that feel loose are simply full of grit, and half an hour with a vacuum improves the latch engagement for free.

The job

1. Clean and inspect the track firstVacuum the track, then run a cloth along it. Grit is what makes a panel sit high, and a panel sitting high is a panel that latches poorly and lifts easily. This step costs nothing and it changes the measurements you are about to take.
2. Deal with the lift path before the slide pathIf the panel lifts in the track, adjusting the roller height at the bottom of the panel often takes up the slack. Many panels have adjustment screws behind a small cover at the base. Where adjustment is not enough, anti-lift blocks fitted in the upper track fill the space and stop the panel rising.
3. Size a track bar to the actual openingMeasure the track with the door fully closed and choose a bar that fits without being forced. A bar that has to be sprung into place is under tension all the time, which wears the track and eventually distorts it.
4. Check the latch engagement while you are thereClose the door and look at where the latch hook meets the keeper. If it barely catches, the keeper often has adjustment slots. A properly engaged factory latch is doing more work than most people assume.
5. Agree the routine with the householdThe bar goes in when the house is occupied and awake, and comes out before bed. Say it out loud to everybody who lives there, and show anybody staying over where it is. This is the same rule as any interior restraint and it matters more here because a patio door is often a second exit.

Stop and call somebody if

• The panel lifts several inches out of the track and the rollers have no adjustment left. That is a door installation issue and worth a glazier.
• The frame is corroded or the track is deformed. Bars bear on the track, and a damaged track is not a fixing point.
• This is the only way out of a basement or a converted room somebody sleeps in. Do not fit anything that blocks it.

What goes wrong

• Fitting a bar and never touching the roller adjustment, so the panel still lifts.
• Leaving the bar in permanently on a door that is the household’s second exit.
• Assuming a bar does anything about the glass. It does not, and it never claimed to.

Where this applies

• The Sliding Glass Door — The lift path: on a lot of older installations the panel can be raised in its track far enough to come out of it, and no latch prevents that.
• The Back Door — Privacy: a back door is usually the only approach to the house where somebody can work unobserved for as long as they like.
• Ground-Floor Windows — Habit: the overwhelming majority of ground-floor window entries are through a window that was left open or unlatched, not one that was forced.

Hardware this job may need

• Window Locks & Stops — limiting how far a window opens without trapping anyone
• Door Reinforcement Locks & Bars — buying time at the door, without blocking the way out

Sources

• National Fire Protection Association — home fire safety and escape planning
• U.S. Fire Administration — home fire prevention and preparedness