Door Jamb Armor is a product that was developed out of a need for a particular device designed to deal with a specific problem. That problem was the inferior design of residential doors and particularly the door jamb. Door jambs are commonly constructed of the cheapest pine that can be purchased. The general thinking here is that this area of the door will only serve to attach the door to the existing structure and once installed it will not be seen. So its overall quality need only be minimal. Even the most expensive residential doors come with these cheap jambs.
The other part of the dilemma is this structurally inferior jamb is what is supposed to secure your home. What are we saying, you ask? Well the locks on your door no matter what grade or quality all use these flimsy door jambs as the anchor point for the lock when the bolt is engaged and the door is considered locked. That is correct, you spend $1200 -$1500 for a high end door then another $75 – $150 for a quality lock set. After which you spend $1500 plus on an electronic security system. You do all of this and think you have secured your home and family. The truth is all you have done is spend a lot of money for false security. We say this because your security is still solely dependent the _” to _” of pine wood on the back of the lock bolt when it is engaged in the door jamb. Yes, on a standard residential door with a wooden jamb this is all that is securing your home. So why should you be concerned, you ask? Will for starters an average significantly motivated twelve year old could break this jamb and be in your home without even breaking a sweat. National statistics show that the average residential door takes approximately three kicks and fifteen seconds to defeat. These statistics also report that homes are broken into every . Yes, but you have a security system with an alarm and off site monitoring. That is all well and good however most home invaders are in and out within five minutes. The national response time for a security alarm is twenty minutes. That means that the criminal will have been in your home, done whatever desired, and gone with fifteen minutes to spare before any assistance arises. Keep in mind that this counter starts once the police have been notified of the situation at your residence. With this in mind lets examine what occurs before the police are notified when you security system is activated. When the alarm is activated it goes to the main security office. Once the alarm is received at the office they call your home to verify that this is indeed a real alarm. If there is no answer then they call the back up number to see if anyone should be at the residence. If at this point they get no response or a negative response from the back up contact the police are finally contacted and a police unit may be dispatched. Meanwhile the home invaders are in your home wandering through your life, at will.
Armor Concepts, LLC started out as a real estate investment company. We happened upon a great deal on a house in a not so nice neighborhood. As with most great real estate deals the property required a little tender love and care to restore it inhabitable condition. It was here that our quest began. We would work on this property by day and leave for the evening only to return in the morning to find the back door kicked in, undesirable characters hold up inside and of course anything of value gone. Each time the point of entry was the back door and the method was forced entry resulting in a broken door jamb and the defeat of high quality locks, still in the locked position. After trying several other door security products we discovered that these products were not affective for a determined intruder. These products did further secure the strike plate and lock bolt interface area however continued kicking would split the entire jamb making it unstable and allowing entry. We also considered products that were to be jammed under the door knob and braced against the floor. However these products had to be installed from the inside and would trap the occupant inside, if placed on all doors.
With all of this in mind we began thinking of ways to solve our problem. After considerable deliberation we concluded that the only way to truly protect the door jamb was to structurally increase its integrity. The problem however was how could we support a weak piece of wood so that its rigidity would be increased while also protecting it on both sides from the torque created by persistent and repeated kicking in the kick zone. (The kick zone is the area of the door beginning at the top lock or as high as it is reasonably possible for a person to make significant repeated impact with the door using the foot or body to affect enough damage as to allow it to open, down to the bottom of the door. This zone includes the entire door section below the kick point and extends from the lock side of the door to the hinge side.) Soon it became obvious to us that the only real way to effectively accomplish this task and give maximum reasonable protection to the door latch and bolt area was to wrap the jamb on both sides with a channel of steel. This channel would be anchored along with the jamb into the rough frame of the structure. This brought us to the development of the Jamb Shield and we were so pleased with ourselves. We had developed a device that would finally prevent undesirable elements form gaining access to our property.
The design principle of the Jamb Shield is fairly simple. It is forty eight inches long and secures to the lock side door jamb. This component wraps around the jamb with a 4 _” leg extending behind the jamb the full length of the piece. There is also a two inch short leg that wraps around into the door side of the jamb. The lock bolt holes are on both sides of the component. This allows the lock bolt to penetrate the both sides of the Jamb Shield and all the way through the door jamb itself. The Jamb Shield is then secured to the rough frame with eight 3 _ “screws. By having the Jamb Shield component so long it spreads any impact force over the length of the jamb. With the jamb being cradled in the Jamb Shield piece the force is spread out over a large area not allowing the force to be focused in just one spot. This prevents the jamb from being forced against its securing hardware and splitting. The Jamb Shield then transfers the force to the surrounding structure and any force taken by the exposed jamb will be primarily shear force trying to go through the 4 _” cross section of the door jamb.
So we installed our new device and were devastated when we returned several days later to see the door kicked in, yet again. Upon closer examination we discovered the Jamb Shield had actually functioned as it was designed and had withstood an incredible beating. The door showed that apparently the invader had realized after much abuse to the door that the lock area had been fortified and would not yield. So it appears at this point the hinge side of the door became the target. When they attacked this unprotected area, once again the door jamb split creating enough instability in the door to allow the lock bolts to be disengaged sufficiently to allow the criminal forced entry into the house. Although the door had eventually been defeated and entry had been gained we knew we were onto something.
Once again we applied the “jamb wrapping technology” to the situation and developed the Hinge Shield component. Hinge Shield is designed to wrap around the door jamb in the same fashion as the Jamb Shield. The Hinge Shield components are two pieces that attach around the upper and lower door hinges of the door assembly. They are twelve inches long and have legs that will be situated on the door jamb in same manner as the Jamb Shield. The Hinge Shield has a 4 _” space cut into the center of the short leg to allow it to fit easily over a standard size hinge without removing the door. Once in place each piece of this component is secured once again with 3 _” screws at five points. This component is only applied to the upper and lower hinges because instability at either of these two points will provide adequate opportunity to defeat the Jamb Shield. With the Jamb Shield and Hinge Shield in place the door jamb basically becomes an extension of the home framing. We discovered at this point that kicking the door now shuck the entire structure but the door jamb stayed intact. The demonstration video will re-iterate this fact.
At this point we have the jamb as secure as we could hope. It was at this time another weak point was discovered. The area in question now was the door slab itself. We found that once considerable punishment was applied after the installation of the first two components the door itself began to split in the area of the lock bolts. You see we were using what was advertised as residential steel doors. We found out that these types of doors are two press formed steel sheets that are sandwiched together on a wooden frame with various different kinds of fill in the center. The wood of course runs along the sides of the door to allow easy attaching and installation of the door hardware. So after repeated pounding the lock bolts try to tear through the wood in the door and separate the metal outer sheets.
In order to combat this discovery we developed the final component of Door Jamb Armor which is Door Shield. This component is once again employs the “wrapping technology” but in a different fashion. Door Shield is a “U” shaped steel channel designed to wrap around the door slab itself, from the inside to the outside in the lock area. It passes between the door slab and door jamb and the lock bolts pass through the piece and extend into the door jamb. Door Shield is ten inches in length and is secured by the lock hardware on both sides of the door. By wrapping this steel channel around the door in the troubled area door is sufficiently re-enforced to help prevent the bolts from splitting the door after repeated forceful abuse.
So now we had it; a complete system for stabilizing the wooden door jambs. When tested the system performed incredibly well and had no failures after considerable aggravated abuse. Finally said abuse caused the deadbolt to yield. However with the Door Jamb Armor in place it still prevented the bolt from passing between the door and jamb. The door remained in place and closed.
It is not our intention or claim that Door Jamb Armor will never fail or prevent a determined criminal access indefinitely. Our intention is to give property owners peace of mind. This peace of mind comes in the form of time and genuine security. The time necessary for a home invader to defeat the Door Jamb Armor system gives the homer owner the needed time to respond to the attack, it gives the alarm company time to do its job, it gives the police time to respond to the call and finally it gives the homeowner the opportunity to actually defend their home. The hope is that this system will offer such resistance to an intruder that they will just move on to easier opportunities leaving the homeowner, their family and their possessions in place and in peace. If you care about the safety and security of your home take a look at this site www.djarmor.com and view the security your family deseves.
