About a month ago I installed the ‘Dreambaby Sliding Door And Window Locks‘ onto my glass balcony sliding doors because I began having issues with my 1.5 year old son trying to slide the balcony door open. We're not on a high floor in our building but the thought of Donnie getting out the door and something happening absolutely terrifies me. The news in the last few months in Toronto have reported quite a few incidents of toddlers and older kids falling from windows or balconies and becoming seriously injured. It's shocking how easy something like a child falling from a window can happen – there's been at least 2-3 incidents in the last few months in our area. As an extra precaution I thought it might be worth buying these locks.
We do have the standard built in locks on the balcony door however we felt it would be best if we had a little something extra installed just in case. Even if our son is always within our sight it's nice to have something extra for our peace of mind if we happen to turn our back for just a second.
The package comes with two locks for installing on either sliding doors or windows and is very simple to install. You only have to peel off the adhesive on the back of the lock and stick it to a clean surface. The package directions recommends waiting 48 hours before setting the lock into the locked position to ensure that it's strongly adhered to the surface.
I decided that we could use the locks in two places; one of course being the sliding balcony door and the other being the sliding door of the front closet. It seemed promising after installing the lock on the closet door unfortunately it did not stay adhered to the surface. I'm not sure why this one had an issue but it came off quite easily when my husband tried to get into the closet. The surface was clean and it was in place for 48 hours just as the instructions indicated. Maybe the product isn't meant to stand up to man-powered testing. We tried to stick this one back onto the closet door but it was a lost cause after it had become “unstuck”.
The most important location we installed the lock -the balcony door – it has worked excellently! It seems to be adhered to the surface very strongly and it won't budge at all when blocking the door from opening. A bonus is also that I really like how the lock is transparent so it doesn't look like something ugly or distracting. I must admit though that when this was first installed I would do a double take every so often since I wasn't sure if an airplane was flying by our window.
The lock is also very easy to use open and close quickly and it's just a matter of pulling a pin to release the lock to open the door. Another great thing about the lock is that by design it's flexible on where you can install it. For example we have ours high enough so that our son can't reach it but low enough that my short 5′ tall self can still reach. Aside from the height of the installation you can place it in a way that it's possible to open the door a small amount for hot days without any little explorers escaping.
In conclusion, I would highly recommend these locks as they've work great for the sliding door and hold up very well. Unfortunately I'm not sure what really happened with the installation on the closet door but I blame my husband.