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How to secure lower door on vacuum?

MEP001

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Bummer to hear about the hinges being attacked. I will need to think about options to protect that as well.
I'm hoping I won't have that issue once I get the lower door secured closed. I was thinking about a piece of angle with two lock holes bolted just to the left of the hinge with another piece with matching holes locked to it covering the hinge side.
 

soapy

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I added hasps on my last 8 vacuums. The reason I don't leave them unlocked is that the dirt baggers are too lazy to hook the latches back up and I have to send refunds out to the regular customers.
 

Keith Baker

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Today, I removed what few locks still remained, fixed broken latches until I ran out, and did this...

View attachment 767
I've been leaving mine unlocked for a long time. I put a 5/16" carriage bolt and nut through the latch to slow them down some. I am always there by about 7 AM and check the vac doors first. This is a problem that comes and goes with who's there overnight.
I've thought about trying to put a screen door type spring inside the vac that would pull the door shut, but I've never tried it.
 

Sequoia

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I'm hoping I won't have that issue once I get the lower door secured closed.
Well, the meth head came in and did his best to pry the lower vacuum door open. Except I added the JE Adams higher security kit, which foiled the effort. My latches are all screwed up now. I presume those are available for purchase?

I'm going to investigate the solution (above) that wraps entirely around the vacuum. As also stated above, if I keep armoring the latches, I think they might decide to simply move over to the hinges.
 
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mjwalsh

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Welcome to my cage fight.

Just waiting now to see who wants to go to jail first.
KleanRide, Sequoia & others,

From our experience a percentage of the perps actually want to go to jail which sometimes is hard to believe. Sigh:cautious: ... possibly that is part of the reason why police in some areas are getting more & more ... less active ... when it comes to property damage.

Not sure if this is pertinent. A little over 2 years ago both our neighbor & our building had some very expensive paint jobs done. That time because of graffiti damage on both buildings the responding officer gave me & the neighbor a brand new "Marsy's Law" document & forms to fill out. The neighboring business is where the contractor bought his paint from ... they had some special chemical that removed the graffiti without damaging the underlying paint. Anybody else have an encounter with the victim oriented "Marsy's Law"??? It has its roots in California & kind of spread to other states including ours.
 
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mjwalsh

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It seems like it could provide a bit of healthy tension protection ... I am sure it could be misused by some though. That is why with all the property damage reported by members on this forum it might have crossed your radar???!!!

 

JMMUSTANG

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When you roll up the vac hoses everyday empty the vac trash too.
Don’t lock your vac trash door.
Most of the time there will be very little to empty. If it‘s cleaned daily it wont take any time.
If there’s nothing there I bet they’ll stop looking.
 

Randy

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When you roll up the vac hoses everyday empty the vac trash too.
Don’t lock your vac trash door.
Most of the time there will be very little to empty. If it‘s cleaned daily it wont take any time.
If there’s nothing there I bet they’ll stop looking.
"Wrong O Red Ryder" they open ours and leave them open, even when we clean them everyday. I'll have to get a couple of pictures of what a operator did here to keep them out.
 
Etowah

MEP001

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When you roll up the vac hoses everyday empty the vac trash too.
Don’t lock your vac trash door.
Most of the time there will be very little to empty. If it‘s cleaned daily it wont take any time.
If there’s nothing there I bet they’ll stop looking.
That's what I've been hoping since I got this wash in a bad neighborhood, 10 months later I'm still cleaning out the vacs every night and finding a mess almost every morning.
 

JMMUSTANG

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Randy, post: 137672, member: 144"]
Wrong O Red Ryder" they open ours and leave them open, even when we clean them everyday. I'll have to get a couple of pictures of what a operator did here to keep them out.

I totally understand. It doesn’t happen on a daily basis for me but it still happens.
Years ago I got tired of fixing doors and vacs, buying locks, cleaning up the mess all the time.
My vac lock now is a paper clip.
The amount of time and trash that is on the ground cost me nothing to clean up but time.
The amount of time, cost, frustration and still cleanup that I had before I don’t have now.
The last wash I built I even looked at using an underground central vac system that would dump right into the dumpster every morning. I realized dreams can be expensive too.
 

Sequoia

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Don’t lock your vac trash door.
If there’s nothing there I bet they’ll stop looking.
At its height, I had 3 different individuals searching for coins in the vac dirt. None of them would close the door properly, so after they came in looking for "treasure" the next vac customers got a poorly performing vac experience.

I'm going to keep the vacs locked and secured, and if they succeed at defeating my security I will up the game with stronger security.
 

MEP001

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I've seen more than three people go through the vacs in one night. There must be 20 regulars along with a number of randoms.

I still haven't cut pieces of angle to bolt on for lock hasps, but I'm betting I'll have to beef up the hinge side too. If I have any problems I'll probably put angle pieces on the hinge side with the one over the door loose and held on by the lock so when the lock is removed the door can still open.
 
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