Patio Guardian PDG01-W Patio Door Guardian Lock - White

We bought this to add some additional security for our pool. One extra step we can take for security.I did a lot of reading looking for a simple solution to add another lock to our sliding glass door that a toddler would not be able to open. This is it. However, I was skeptical about the quality of the product for something under 20 bucks.When I got it and opened up the packaging - I was immediately impressed with the quality of it. It does not feel like a "cheap" item. It feels solid and seems to be made of quality materials.I was also concerned that it only came in white. I was really curious if I would be able to paint this. Good news here - the "faceplate" cover (the part you see the most) is easily painted. Its material and finish makes me believe it was even designed to be painted should you want to. The rest of the unit, I would not paint. But I did not think the rest of it needed it. But if you are curious if you can match it up with your door color - that faceplate is easily painted.Install:Total time of install was about 10 minutes. It actually was super easy. A drill and a screwdriver is all that was needed. And the instructions are very clear, simple and they even have this paper template that you can cut out to help you. I did not find that to be even needed as it was pretty straight forward on what needed to happen.I really like that we can permanently unlock this and forget about it when we have busy traffic going through the door. But for that time when we want things "locked down" - this was a very inexpensive, non intrusive way to add that extra security we were looking for.I hope this helps someone make a decision on this great product. If this product was priced twice as much, I still would have bought it.

Works great and is really versatile based on your installation. I got this mostly as a security feature to lock the sliding door at night, rather than as a child safety feature (although I have a toddler so good for that too). The poor design of my sliding door makes it easy to actually lift up the door in the runner and open the door from the outside when it's supposedly "locked" with the handle (was quite disturbed to find that out... the builders obviously don't care if you get burglarized!).On to the install: I have a right to left sliding door as in the picture. Unfortunately the nimnodes (tech term) who built my house put the sliding side of my door on the outside instead of inside (no idea why). Still, I was able to mount this with no issues, just flipped it around and put it at the top right corner of the door instead of the top left, and the door stop still fits in the runner just fine. Noting I'm not able to use the plastic cover over the screws, but not really an "aesthetics" issue for me, and I appreciate this product is "universally versatile enough" I could still make it work. Paper template they provide with the instructions is handy also (not so much for me because my door is backwards, but can see is would work great for a standard install).Make sure when you drill the holes for the long screws in the top door stop they're absolutely straight vertical, otherwise the stop at the top may end up off center. Only thing I can complain about is the long screws for the stop should be a MUCH higher quality/grade for the price (the heads strip out easily when screwing in with a power drill bit).

The construction of this product is very strong. It's easily reversible for left-to-right doors. Our plastic door frame accepted this lock perfectly. Competing products are inferior as many use double-sided stick tape which our child would have torn off in seconds.The installation is high, which makes it hard for < 12yr to open. This is a slight disadvantage as in a multiple-child household, shorter (but older) children can't easily help lock/unlock this for the parents. This is minor disadvantage as a chair/stool can easily be used by older (but shorter) children.The bolt catch comes with extra-long screws to catch the door frame, which is comforting.The installation instructions recommend using a paper template. This helped for the door mount, but not as much for the bolt catch. For the bolt catch, we slid the door closed, lined the catch and marked, the template wasn't very accurate when bent at the dashed line, so I would strongly recommend aligning the bolt catch manually and not trusting the template.The paper template shows a 3mm gap between the bolt and the top of the door frame, but the paper template doesn't really accommodate for this, further enforcing the reason to verify the bolt catch before drilling.The installation instructions warn about possible glass interference. I'm not sure how this is supposed to help the consumer, as there's no way of knowing how deep the glass is in the door. We were fortunate and didn't have a problem with the glass countersinking interfering with the screws.Since the mechanism often screws into a plastic door frame, I strongly recommend using a hand-screwdriver for tightening the screws. An electric screwdriver will strip the plastic.