Sliding Door Latch- Pool Safety Latch Two Way Opening Sliding Door Latch

I think this is meant for the glass sliding door, but I easily installed it to keep my cat from pawing open the screen door. Expensive but worth it to keep her from showing up on a “lost cat” poster.

I needed a lock for my sliding pocket doors in my house, my cat knows how to wiggle his paw under the door and slide it open lol. Scoured the internet for everything, finally found this and it was the holy grail! Pretty easy install, I have never used any power tools before but i picked up a drill and did it within 30 minutes!

My husband does not cuss. Installing this lock, I heard a stream of words from him that I've never heard before, even on the worst movie ever! On a Sunday no less! The holes don't line up. When you finally get the screws wrangled into both sides and tightened down, the latch won't move. We're on the third hour of installation and it still won't work. The concept is great, but whoever designed the mechanics should be fired, after having to install several of these worthless pieces of ____ (to quote my husband)!

Pros:- Mounted high enough (e.g., 5'), this gadget can auto-latch when your sliding door is closed and prevent short people (kids) from opening the door themselves. When the sliding door provides direct access to a pool area, this is invaluable and can help satisfy local legal requirements for securing the pool.- You can disable the auto-latch when there are no kids around by opening it completely until it latches open.Cons: . Doors vary, and although they do provide shims for the most common issues, there are still problems:- I had to mount mine on the 'other' side of the door because that provided the only mounting point for the hardware which receives the hook. This causes the hook to engage in an upward direction, defying gravity, but it still works.- Mounting the receiver in the door channel (no choices there), the device itself hits the receiver loop before the door is completely closed. You can't mount the device further away without hitting the glass. (see PostScript for a possible fix).- As someone else pointed out, the spring which returns the hook to make auto-closure possible isn't strong enough to overcome the amount of friction you will experience if you tighten the screws as much as you might like. Using the extensions to move some of this friction outside of the door helps. Carefully enlarging the hole through the door and lubricating it also helps.To make this product better, I would consider:- provide a shallower receiver mechanism (and make corresponding adjustments to the shape of the hook if needed) so that doors like mine can close completely without cutting into the frame.- change construction to reduce friction when mounted. Use nylon or metal for the rotating parts, reduce the size of the barrel a little to avoid contact with the inside of the door, or even use a bearing at each end to allow the mechanism to move more freely.This wasn't a perfect solution, but I would still recommend it to anyone who needs to secure a sliding door which leads into a pool area. Depending on your door, you may or may not run into these problems.PostScript:I finally bit the bullet and cut a hole in the sliding door frame in order to recess the receiver (or 'staple') into the wall. I discovered that the aluminum frame was hollow, so simply cutting a hole in the outer layer allowed me to recess the receiver nicely. It isn't pretty, but now the door closes completely while the child lock still works fine. To cut the hole, I used a sheet metal hole cutting bit for the corners and a Dremel cutting wheel for the sides. Since the frame is aluminum, it's pretty easy to cut.

Having now installed two of these, it's clear why some reviewers thought they needed to loosen the mounting screws to stop the latch arm from binding, only to have the unit wiggle. For the latch to operate smoothly, the two mounting drill holes and the center hole all need to be exactly parallel to each other and perpendicular to the door or else the center shaft will bind. But this is almost impossible to get exactly right three times by eye. Happily, the design of these latches is forgiving if your center hole is 1/2" instead of 3/8" and if the mounting holes are distorted a bit when the mounting screws emerge pointing a little up, down or sideways. Do that and you can then tighten the unit snugly and the arm will move freely.Another tip: at least one reviewer said that a city inspector rejected the latch on a door leading to a pool because it can be easily disabled by continuing to turn turn the key after it unlatches until you hear a click. You can disable that disabling function by inserting a short screw that is a little wider than the groove that the latch travels, at a point that the screw stops the latch from moving to the end of the groove.

Worked great! PASSED an inspection for your pool safety.

Solved a 5 year old problem of keeping our two golden retrievers from opening the sliding screen door on our French patio doors. If we locked the screen from the inside, someone in the back yard could not get back in the house. If I went out with the dogs, I couldn’t lock the sliding screen door behind me. With the NEW lock, we can open a locked sliding screen door from the outside as well as the inside of our family room.The golden retrievers are NOT happy now as they can no longer let themselves in and out any time they want to!

The internal little screws come loose every 2 weeks- I think it has to do with plastic or something. Please make the locking control side one piece, and please make it out of metal! Plastic can't handle this wear and tear.