As per title, really. Eldest is in his last year of primary and will be leaving the house to walk to school a little after we leave for work. I like the idea of being able to remotely check he has actually locked the house and also that he can always get back in without having to carry a key. The low tech, key under a pot/keysafe option is less appealing after being burgled last year.

So, any pit-falls, brands to avoid and recommendations gratefully received.

We’ve got the yale keycode lock on the door… i WAS going to get the smart/wifi module but haven’t…
It saves the 20 thousand teenagerswho come into our house having to use a key (which is a moot point, as they leave all the doors unlocked/open anyway..)

My OH has the keyfob..

It’s useful. As secure as a normal lock TBH.

If someone wanted to break into a house, it’s not that hard.

DrP

I’ve got a Nuki,which I like but you have to stay on top of the batteries and the only downside is the dog has a habit of unlocking the door, which can de a bit alarming when your any distance from the house and you get the front door unlocked message popping up on your phone.

Check out the lock picking lawyer on YouTube, he doesn’t rate them, too easy to pick.

As an alternative why not get a key coded key safe? For example keysafe.co.uk

leaving the house to walk to school a little after we leave for work

Just kick him out when you leave?
Assuming its only 5-10 mins he can just get to school a bit easier.

Assuming you trust him to get get to school and back, just let him a a key?
Sow it into his bag/jacket if you’re concerned about him loosing it.

Check out the lock picking lawyer on YouTube, he doesn’t rate them, too easy to pick.

that’s a bit of a sweeping generalisation, yeah probably the cheap/crap ones feature an easily picked lock, but the good ones are either lock-less so cannot be picked (although they come with their own pitfalls!) or retro-fit to your existing lock cylinder (in which case the security of the lock is entirely down to you)

I’ve got a Nuki (retrofit) on an outbuilding, pretty pleased with it, will probably try one on the main front door at some point next time I see decent offer on them! Worst case scenario and the battery does go flat (through laziness, as it does warn you!!) you can still use your normal key.

Just kick him out when you leave?
Assuming its only 5-10 mins he can just get to school a bit easier.

Although it’s around that, it’ll be a fair bit later from next year when he’s at high school. I realise we’re probably being hand-wringing, helicopter parents and god knows we were left to roam feral at that age, but it’s a an extra level of stress that we can ‘tech’ out of our lives.

Re. the trust thing, he’s a sensible lad but prone to day dreaming (not unlike his Dad). The ability to check the house is secured remotely is the appeal in this case.

Move to somewhere you don’t need to lock your doors.

We realised that we’d left a rear door we don’t use unlocked for 13 months last summer 🙂

@Murrey

As an alternative why not get a key coded key safe? For example keysafe.co.uk

Lockpickinglawyer does not rate them either, they also invalidate some house insurance policies.

Walk along Wordsworth / Skiddaw / Helvellyn Street in Keswick and pretty much every homeHoliday rental has a keysafe or similar on it. Insurance can’t be that hard to find.

Move to somewhere you don’t need to lock your doors.

Then he’d have a really long walk to school 😄.

they also invalidate some house insurance policies

That’s my fear. Having had our burglary claim assessed face to face last year, the insurers were very interested in the physical security measures we had in place. Unless, they were specifically mentioned as okay in the schedule, I’m not sure I’d risk it.

Worst case scenario and the battery does go flat (through laziness, as it does warn you!!) you can still use your normal key.

Ah,you’ve got to make sure that you have the right lock cylinder thou, not all will allow you to unlock the the door if there’s a key in the other side(which the nuki is turning).

Regarding the Lock Picking Lawyer, he’s certainly informative and a good source of entertainment – but since I’ve never seen him struggle much with any lock, if you go on his advice, you’d probably never leave the house without having a front door worthy of Fort Knox, and windows to match!

they also invalidate some house insurance policies

Really? Which ones?

We’ve just had one of the keysafes linked above installed at my mum’s house. I’ve not tried to decode it yet but at least it’s not one of those shitty Masterlock ones.

This is one instance where security through obscurity is a good thing. No-one is going to breach it if they don’t know it’s there. If you do get one, don’t put it somewhere obvious.

and god knows we were left to roam feral at that age, but it’s a an extra level of stress that we can ‘tech’ out of our lives.

We got a phone call from school one morning that one of ours had not arrived at school.
He and pals decided to settle into someone’s allotment shed – they even got the kettle on (!)… And forgot they were on the way to school!

Ah,you’ve got to make sure that you have the right lock cylinder thou, not all will allow you to unlock the the door if there’s a key in the other side(which the nuki is turning).

well that is true (and the reason I replaced my cylinder with a thumb turn one before installing the Nuki!)

The nice thing with the nuki is you can use fobs/keypads/fingerprint readers with it as well as your mobile.

you’d probably never leave the house without having a front door worthy of Fort Knox, and windows to match!

Don’t forget about doing something with your roof, not sure tiles and felt are that secure 🙂

As I mentioned, if someone wants to get in your house, they wil…

It took me 10 minutes to install a cat flap in our rear door….
3 minutes to drill a pilot hole and jigsaw out the shape….
It wouldn’t have taken any longer to jigsaw out a DrP sized hole!

DrP

I don’t think many burglars carry jigsaws, but yes, agreed.

I was burgled twice at the old house, unrelated incidents. The first jemmied the wood-frame window open, the second kicked the door through. Literally, they didn’t just boot it open, they kicked a hole in it large enough to crawl through.

I got all the rear windows and doors replaced after that.

My old team at work used to install keysafes, they fitted about 400 a year. The house insurance thing is generally not true. Get something like the Supra C500, they are Secure by Design and insurance approved. We never had any incidence of a key safe being broken into by baddies. When my engineers had to force entry to then it would take a good 15 mins with noisy power tools. Much easier to just lob the tools through the window. I promise you, if you have a Supra c500 it will not be the weakest point on your house.

Cheap Key safe are a liability though, they open with one tap of a hammer.

Final thing though, don’t go and use a year of birth as a combination on the safe! Nearly every family fitted key safe we helped remove could be opened by starting with 1920 and working your way up!

If kiddo can be trusted to walk to school by himself, why can’t he be trusted with a key?

I’d explore options for stopping him losing the key, before resorting to gadgetry.

why can’t he be trusted with a key?

I was going to ask the same question. My youngest has a tendency to loose everything but when she moved up to High School she had to have her own key for the days I couldn’t get home before her.
She was reluctant but we spun it as an age responsibility thing and she’s been fine, It’s probably the only thing she hasn’t lost or mislaid!!

I’m thinking about getting a Nuki to (as already have an Ultion lock). Has anyone found a decent letterbox guard though (for when you have a thumb turn lock on the inside)? All I found was a cheap and flimsy thing on Amazon which I don’t think would take much effort to force off from it’s screws.

I thought the advice for key safes was to deliberately put them somewhere obvious so if someone did want to try and break into it, they’d have to do it in plain sight of anyone walking past/neighbours etc.

If kiddo can be trusted to walk to school by himself, why can’t he be trusted with a key?

I’m not 100% certain he can be completely trusted with either, but he will be starting his last term in primary after Easter, so we’re trying to manage the transition to High School in September by encouraging him to be a little more independent. He is quite a young 11 and while he’s not daft, he’s prone to distraction and could absolutely leave the front door unlocked while staring at Pokemon on his phone as he leaves.

Being burgled last year has left us hyper-vigilant to risk, as we were definitely targeted, so if spending a couple of hundred quid means I can reduce that anxiety (justified or otherwise) then I’m okay with that. I get that someone will be able to break in if they really wanted to, it’s more that if someone can waltz in through an unlocked door, we wouldn’t insured at all.

To those questioning the House insurance thing, the Palliative care nurse saw ours and suggested I contact the insurers. They confirmed some were OK, others not if the house was empty. As the house was never empty I did not bother to check further.

Go Compare has a fairly recent article on it.

As for “there are loads of places with them”, I bet half of them did not contact their insurers to check.

Ref the more secure devices. The C500 mentioned about can be picked in a couple of minutes using nothing more fancy than you fingers or something like a big biro with the ‘cartridge taken out.

they also invalidate some house insurance policies

This is pure STW BS bingo..

On every thread, no matter what the subject, someone always posts ‘this will invalidate your insurance policy’.

Just total BS.

Ref the more secure devices. The C500 mentioned about can be picked in a couple of minutes using nothing more fancy than you fingers or something like a big biro with the ‘cartridge taken out.

That used to be the case but that weakness was designed out years ago, The video you linked to is 8 years old.
Trust me, I had engineers installing and removing these every day of the week. Often the codes had been lost. If there was a way for them to remove locked units without an angle grinder, they would have done so.

I thought the advice for key safes was to deliberately put them somewhere obvious so if someone did want to try and break into it, they’d have to do it in plain sight of anyone walking past/neighbours etc.

Not quite. Ideally you don’t want people to see them from the street or when at you front door. This is mainly as a key safe sometimes suggests older person or a property that may be vacant often. So best that bandits can’t see them. But, if they are trying to break in, don’t have it round the back where they can work on it at their leisure. So perfect spot is front or side of house where baddies will be seen, but concealed enough that most people would not notice the key safe. So far side of a downpipe on side of house for example.

Key in key safe opens the alarmed garage or very secure workshop.
House key is well hidden in garage or workshop.

I’m thinking about getting a Nuki to (as already have an Ultion lock). Has anyone found a decent letterbox guard though (for when you have a thumb turn lock on the inside)?

the door my Nuki is on doesn’t even have a letterbox, so never considered this, but checking with my front door this morning there’s just no way I’m getting my arm through the letterbox… maybe a child but then unless they’ve got extremely long forearms and/or an extra joint they’re not going to be able to reach the lock on the inside let alone disassemble it to the extent they can access the thumb-turn. (Although having said that I think my front door may be slightly wider than the average!) There’s an “unlock” button on the Nuki itself which you could trigger with a coat-hanger etc, but this can be disabled in the settings.