Should I lock the door between the garage and the house

Security

My house has a garage. The garage has a "garage opener" – so when I leave home, I press a button and the gate lowers. There's a door between the garage and house. What level of security do people usually give this door? What kind of lock do I need. Is the external garage door considered as secure as a dead bolted door? Is it unwise to simply leave the internal garage door unlocked just like any other internal door in my house?

I understand that I should err on the side of caution, but I just wanted to get an idea for what the "standards" are.

Best Answer

If your garage door opener is made in the last 10-15 years, it's almost certainly impossible to "hack" the code. Modern openers use unique codes for each remote with 64- or 128-bit keys (which allow for a ridiculously huge number of possibilities).

However, it can be really easy to break into a garage mechanically, using the quick release:

enter image description here enter image description here enter image description here enter image description here

As others have said, once inside, someone is free to work on the door.

Often the walls between the garage and house are nothing more than drywall with insulation in it, so it's also possible to simply cut/smash the drywall and go around the locked door.

A locked door may thwart a crime of opportunity (if the garage door is left open, for example) but if someone actually goes through the effort of opening the door it doesn't really seem like a really big obstacle.