Kwikset 910 smart lock--childproofing options?

I recently purchased the kwikset 910 smart lock. Is there a way to keep my 2 year old from manually unlocking my smartlock?

nope. closest you could get is re-locking after X minutes.

Do you know the min. Amt of mins?

Some people with family members who are wanderers build a small box case over the interior side of the lock With a flip latch. Note that in order to meet safety codes it must not require “any special knowledge or tools” to unlock from the inside, for fire safety reasons, but this can often be made just childproof enough to deter a small child while still being obvious to guests even in an emergency.

There are other childproofing options like hinge locks, but the problem is most of these is that they will prevent the door from being opened from the outside Until manually reset from the interior side, Which may not suit your household. These are often called “confounding locks“ and will typically be found in the childproofing section. But again, these end up working like a chain: someone from the inside will have to open them again before the door can be opened, so they may not work for a two parent household where you don’t want the person who is home to have to come to the door to let the other parent in the house.

https://www.amazon.com/Door-Guardian-Childproof-Deadbolt-Swinging/dp/B015HRGLNK/

Some families prefer just to set up an automation that will send a push notification and set off a chime when the door is opened.

And still other families use baby gates or hearth gates to set up an “airlock” around the door so that the child can’t actually get to the door knob and doorlock. This is also popular for keeping small pets from running out through the door.

So there are a lot of different options, and different things work for different families. :sunglasses:

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With a smartapp or webcore you can pretty much set it to anything you want. With the 910 there is a switch you can set that will re-lock it after 30 seconds. Check you installation guide. Switch 2

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I forgot there is one other option if you want a solution that will work with your home automation, but it’s quite expensive.

That would be to first put in a standard second deadbolt higher up on the door, where you typically place a chain lock. That should be high enough to keep the two-year-old from reaching it while still meeting fire safety codes.

Then install one of the smart locks that doesn’t add any hardware to the exterior of the door, and just has a cover for the turnbolt on the interior. The Danalock is less expensive but not as well reviewed as the August pro with the connector bridge. Also, if anyone in the household has an iPhone, the August pro will also work with HomeKit. But the Danalock doesn’t require an additional bridge device as long as you get the Z wave version, so that’s a plus on its side. Anyway, if it was me, I would get the August, but I mention the Danalock just for completeness.

If you go this route, you would end up with two smart locks on the door, your current Kwikset which is just above door knob height and the August at about shoulder height for an adult.

The total cost might be as much as $500 to add the August, so an expensive option, but you would end up with something that could be unlocked from the outside or by your home automation system, while using one of the dumb devices in my previous post should only cost about $25 but would mean someone from inside the house would have to manually unlock it before another Family member could come through from the outside.

So different things will work for different households, but that would be another option.

Would this work? Just install on the interior side.

You mean one smart lock facing in and one smart lock facing out? ( you would have to have two locks facing opposite directions because otherwise anyone coming up to the front door could just use the turnbolt to enter the house)

In most cities that will not meet the fire code for a building where people sleep because someone would have to know the lock code in order to exit the home during a fire. That falls into the category of “special knowledge.”

Thats what I was thinking too. The problem I have is the child, know’s how to undo the deadbolt.

Then you probably need to go to one of the confounding locks at least for now. Or the baby gate barriers.

You might also want to consider the alarms or Chimes.

One more option if you have a knob on the door on the inside instead of a lever. This one doesn’t prevent another household member from using the smart lock from the outside. and it requires pressing on both sides of the knob at the same time that you’re gripping and turning which is usually just physically too difficult for tiny hands.

People have differing success with this depending on how persistent their kid is in trying to physically break it off of the knob. But read the reviews, there are a lot of different things you can do about that issue.

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