Patio, terrace and solarium door locks in Torrevieja
In a town of bungalows with solariums and flats with terraces, the door that fails is usually not the front one. It is the wide aluminium one that gets opened twenty times a day in August.
The doors
Why this is a page of its own here
The classic Torrevieja bungalow has a ground-floor unit with a terrace and an upper unit reached by outside stairs with a solarium on top. Add the terraces of the seafront blocks and the glazed rear doors of the villas in La Veleta and Los Altos, and most properties in this town have at least one wide aluminium door — often more than one.
These doors take everything the climate has: direct sun for most of the day, salt from the sea and from two lagoons, and wind-blown sand along the whole coastal strip. They are also the doors a second home leaves shut for eight months and then expects to work.
What fails
Four failures, and what each one means
The gearbox
You lift the handle, it feels loose or grinds, and the key turns without locking anything. The mechanism inside the door edge has broken. It is replaceable, but the part has to match the door's profile.
Alignment
The bolts no longer meet their keeps because the door has dropped or the frame has moved. Often fixed by adjustment alone, and if it is, you should not be sold a mechanism.
Rollers and track
The slider gets heavy, jumps or scrapes. Sand and salt in the track, worn rollers, or both. Ignored, it pulls everything else out of line.
The cylinder
Sometimes it really is just the cylinder, especially on an exposed terrace door. That part of the job is the same as on any other door: replacing the cylinder.
The one to fix first
If the door still locks but has to be persuaded, that is the moment to deal with it: an alignment or a set of rollers now, instead of a gearbox and an opening later. A multipoint door that fails while it is locked has to be opened through the mechanism, which is slower and costs more than the repair would have.
More on the summer version of this problem in the solarium door that will not lock in August, and on the mechanical version in when the key turns but the door stays shut.
Who calls
Who this page is usually for
- Owners of bungalows in Los Balcones, El Limonar, La Siesta and Aguas Nuevas, with a terrace door below and a solarium door above.
- People who let their property out and need the terrace door working before the next arrival: see the holiday rental service.
- Owners returning to a home that has been closed since last season, where the slider has seized in its track: closed-up properties.
- Residents of the seafront blocks, where terrace doors face the sea directly and wear faster than anything else in the flat.
Covered across the whole comarca, not just the town — see the list of areas.
Questions
Questions about patio and sliding doors
The handle lifts but the key will not turn. Is the lock broken?
Usually the cylinder is fine and the gearbox behind it has failed, or the door has dropped far enough that the bolts no longer line up with their keeps. Both are repairs to the mechanism, not to the key.
Is it cheaper to replace the whole door?
Almost never. The frame, the glass and the fitting are the expensive parts, and they are usually fine. A gearbox, a set of rollers or a realignment costs a fraction of a new door.
My sliding door has got heavy and scrapes along the track.
That is the rollers and the track rather than the lock, and here it is usually sand and salt packed into both. Left alone it eventually pulls the door out of line, and then the lock stops engaging too.
Can these doors be made more secure?
Yes, and it is worth doing on a ground-floor terrace. Better cylinders, additional locking points, restrictors and anti-lift devices all exist for aluminium and uPVC. What suits your door depends on the profile it is built from.
It only sticks in the afternoon. Am I imagining it?
No. Aluminium expands as it heats, and a west-facing terrace door in July can measure a couple of millimetres more than it did at breakfast. A door with no margin left will lock in the morning and refuse in the afternoon.
A terrace door that fights you?
Send a photograph of the door edge with the handle lifted, and a second one of the track. Most of these are diagnosed before anybody arrives.
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