Electric locking doors ensure church security

Case Study:.

’It’s nice to get positive responses from the customers,’ said David Jarvis director of D R Services (London) .

He was speaking after D R Services had finished an interesting job for a church in London Fields, which could become a template for other churches across the land.

St Michael and all Angels installed six glass doors to mark the 50th anniversary of the consecration.

Nothing very remarkable about that, perhaps, except the idea was to create a public space which would be open at almost any time, a bit like a bank lobby.

D R Services was recommended for the job by Rees Bolter Architects, whom DRS had worked with before.

The company installed three pairs of electric locking doors.

The church was originally built with huge white painted doors that had tiny visual panels.

’They wanted to open the place up to make it look open but not to actually have the problem of howling gales and things, so it’s a good principle,’ said David Jarvis.

’It’s basically so they can leave the little chapel at the front open if nobody is there.

The inner two pairs of doors are locked so that nobody can get into the main church’.

Although this is the first job of this kind that D R Services has done, it will not be the last.

The company is currently at work at the Church of the Annunciation in Park Lane, London, on a similar project.

’They want to open the great big black doors on the outside so that the people know the church is open,’ said David Jarvis, ’and then they can have a pair of glass doors on the inside for the draught so they can open it up and it looks like it’s open but there isn’t a howling gale running through’.

The London Fields job seemed fairly straightforward for a specialist glazing contractor like D R Services, there was at least one surprising element.

’Every job has interesting little problems,’ said David Jarvis, ’that one was they wanted us to install electric locking’.

The electric locks are at the top of the new doors.

When they are closed an electro magnet in the frame pulls an armature plate up and locks them.

All very normal.

What was unusual was that they wanted 43 keys for a conventional locking system rather than smart cards or a key code system.

DRS installed the key system and suggested the church go to a locksmith to get the additional duplicates cut.

The specification for the job was three frameless glass doors with rails, top and bottom, created by Wilhelm Schlechtendahl and Sohne and Co K.G.(WSS), with an electric lock manufactured by a British company.

’The manufacturer of the rails in Germany doesn’t actually have an electric lock,” said David Jarvis, “so we take the extrusion machined out to match the electric locks and then we install our system in and it looks exactly the same from the outside’.