As the boundary between the cozy indoors and the inviting outdoors, patio doors play a pivotal role in blending comfort, aesthetics, and functionality in our homes. Whether you’re sipping your morning coffee while watching the sunrise or hosting a twilight dinner party under the stars, the right patio door can transform your living space. Let’s glide through the various types of patio doors available, helping you open up to the possibilities.

Sliding Patio Doors

Sliding patio doors are the sleek minimalists of the door world, offering a simple yet elegant solution that saves space while maximizing natural light and outdoor views. Operating on a horizontal track, these doors slide open and closed with ease, making them perfect for homes with limited outdoor space. Their streamlined design lends itself well to modern aesthetics, though you can find options that suit any home style.

French Patio Doors

Oozing with traditional charm, French patio doors open up like a book to reveal the beauty of your garden or patio. These doors are hinged at the sides and can swing inwards or outwards, requiring more clearance space than sliding doors. French doors are renowned for their romantic, classic look, enhancing the architectural beauty of any home. They’re ideal for creating a grand entrance to your outdoor space.

Bi-Fold Patio Doors

Bi-fold, or folding patio doors, are the transformers of the door world. They consist of multiple panels that fold back like an accordion, opening up an entire wall to the great outdoors. This type of door is perfect for those who love to entertain, offering a seamless transition between indoor and outdoor spaces. When fully opened, bi-fold doors break down the barriers, extending your living space and blending it with your garden or patio.

Stacking Patio Doors

Similar to bi-fold doors but with a slightly different mechanism, stacking patio doors consist of multiple panels that slide and stack neatly against one side. This design allows for a wide, unobstructed opening, making it ideal for enjoying expansive views and easy access to your outdoor space. Stacking doors can accommodate larger openings, making them a versatile choice for modern homes.

Pivot Patio Doors

Pivot doors rotate on a pivot box rather than being hinged to a door frame, creating a dramatic and modern opening. These doors swing in a wide arc, making a bold architectural statement. Suitable for larger spaces, pivot patio doors are not just doors but pieces of art, adding a touch of sophistication and uniqueness to your home.

Opening Up to Your Perfect Patio Door

Choosing the right patio door for external door fitting is about finding the balance between style, functionality, and maintenance. Consider how you use your outdoor space, the architectural style of your home, and your climate when making your selection. Whether you prefer the classic elegance of French doors, the modern simplicity of sliding doors, or the transformative potential of bi-fold doors, the right choice can enhance your living space and connect you more deeply with the outdoors. So, step through the threshold and embrace the beauty of seamless indoor-outdoor living.

Keyholding is a valuable security service at any time of year but is particularly useful to put in place during the festive season.

Most business premises, with the exception of retail, are slightly quieter over the festive season and many close entirely for at least a few days between Christmas and New Year.

With a keyholding service in place you can be confident that any security alerts that do occur over this time are still dealt with swiftly, and by security experts who know exactly how to deescalate any situation.

In this article, we will examine the benefits of professional keyholding in more detail, looking at the threats you can face when closing up for the Christmas holidays.

What exactly is keyholding?

Keyholding is a service that benefits businesses at any time of the year, ensuring that a professional security company is the one that deals with emergency situations and not your untrained staff.

Holding a set of the keys to your premises in a secure location, your security firm will monitor your alarm or CCTV system and react immediately in the event of a security breach.

Deploying a team of security professionals, they will visit your site and use your keys to gain access. They will then use all their training and skills to deal with whatever situation has arisen.

As you can imagine, this is a highly valuable asset to have at your disposal at any time of the year, but even more so at Christmas when there are fewer people on site to raise the alarm.

What is the key to putting a keyholding service in place?

Finding the right security company is by far the most important thing when arranging a keyholding service.

You are rightly very selective over who you grant access to your premises and certainly don’t want to be handing out keys to just anyone.

Pick a security firm with a proven track record of protecting commercial premises in your local area and who is fully licenced by the SIA.

If possible, you should also pick a company that offers a range of monitored security systems such as monitored CCTV and monitored alarms. This will ensure that when a situation is detected the keyholding firm is the very first one notified (alongside you of course).

Their staff will also be highly experienced in using the security technology on the site so will be able to reset it when they arrive or utilise it to identify the location of the intruder.

What else can keyholders do?

Besides responding to Christmas emergencies, keyholders can be given responsibility for a variety of other tasks that they will carry out using the set of keys provided.

These include closing up the premises at the end of the working day and opening up again at the start of play.

If you are closing up your premises for the Christmas break there is no better way to ensure that the site is secure than having a professional security team give it the once over before shutdown.

Security guarding can be an incredibly rewarding career. You get to spend your time protecting innocent people from harm and are in one of the few jobs where you can truly say that no two days are ever the exact same.

Security guards are the unsung heroes of the security industry, and remain integral in a world dominated by every changing security technologies such as biometric keypads and auto-tracking CCTV.

These individuals play an incredibly important role in safeguarding against all sorts of different threats in all sorts of different environments and if you are thinking of pursuing this as a career you are clearly someone who thrives under this pressure and responsibility.

In this blog, we will look at some of the most common responsibilities of a modern security guard, giving you a better idea of what to expect once you have obtained your SIA licence, the qualification required to provide security guarding services in the UK.

Responsibilities of a security guard

Physical security

The mains tasks of security guards have remained the same for many decades now. When you imagine a security guard, you think of someone in uniform, patrolling a site looking for suspicious activity and intercepting intruders. This is a big part of the day-to-day role as a security guard who will usually be designated a set mobile patrol route that they will tread on a set basis. The sight of security guards on these patrols is enough to send most criminals scuttling for cover and will provide those on site with the sense of safety that they deserve.

Keyholding

An alarm response keyholding service involves attending a site on occasion rather than being stationed there at all times.

If you are on alarm response duty as a security officer you will likely be stationed at a central location and be deployed to any number of different sites if a problem is detected there. Once on site you will be tasked with investigating the root cause of the alarm activation and securing the site before locking up and returning to base.

You may also be asked to perform non-security related services as part of a keyholding service such as allowing out-of-hours site access to contractors or opening and closing the site. That said, a security guard can never switch off and you will be responsible for checking the site for any security threats before granting anyone access and checking the identification of those attempting to enter.

Monitoring technologies

Great security guards don’t shy away from modern security technologies but instead embrace it and utilise it to optimise the services that they are able to provide.

Security guards will monitor and reset alarm systems, observe CCTV to detect threats in real time and manage remote access control technologies such as fingerprint or facial recognition scanners.

Customer service

Security guarding is a public facing role where, depending on where it is that you are deployed, you will need to communicate with customers, staff, and members of the public on an everyday basis.

For this reason, becoming a security guard is not something you should do if you are not a people person and don’t enjoy a good chat every now and again.

Writing reports

Yes, we know. Even though being a security guard is an active job in the main without too much sitting around, there is still plenty of paperwork to be done. After a patrol or in the event of a security breach you will need to provide a report detailing exactly what happened, the action that was taken, and what action should be taken by your clients ton ensure that something similar isn’t able to happen again. Don’t worry though, you don’t need to be a professional writer to become a security guard. These reports will soon become second nature to you and you will receive plenty of training in how to produce them before entering the field.

If the world of security guarding sounds like one you would like to enter, get in touch with our recruitment team today. We are always looking for new talented individuals who have a passion for helping people and a knack for security