Although I live in a friendly safe condo, I often have to go away on work.

Are there any firms in Pats that specialise in home security. I.E putting a more solid lock on your front door or even security door.

The ones that come as standard don't feel very sturdy

Better safe then sorry!

There are a couple of locksmiths on Threppasit road that good and have plenty of stock.

http://www.scorpiondoors.com/

I saw a display for these security doors once at Big C Extra. They looked pretty good. Their shop is on 3rd Rd.

there is a cone / cup like metal can that goes over your door handle and you put a padlock on it ,

you can get them at Big C etc for 200 baht or so

then they cannot get a big wrench on your doorknob and twist it off ,

this helps but is not going to help if they just kick the door in !

then you need to reinforce the door jam with metal and longer screws

I always wanted to put dead bolts locks up and down

one other thing is dead bolts with keys on both sides , not good if you need to get out quick , but if a thief gets in your place thru the window they need to leave that way too so hard to carry your TV out the window !

Hope that helps

As mentioned, if your door is just simple wood construction then regardless of the quality of the bolts anyone can break in in seconds using a crowbar or even a solid shoulder.

Scorpion doors offer a viable alternative that also reduces noise but in my building the likelihood of anyone breaking the doors down is very remote, so changing the whole door is overkill.

My door had two locks, like this:

the regular twist handle sort (which can be opened with many different keys) and a standard dead bolt (which can be bumped very easily).

So I decided to retain the twist handle (because without a handle it would be hard to close the door) and just changed the mechanism on the dead bolt to a better one that uses keys that (in theory) cant easily be bumped.

Regular deadbolt mechanisms like this

can be found in any supermarket for about 250B but they can be bumped open in seconds.

I replaced the old deadbolt with one that has special keys:

which are supposedly "bump-proof". The complete deadbolt costs about 500B and is much harder to find than the version with standard keys. All the DIY stores here that I looked at have a few.

Replacement is a simple job that takes about 5 minutes and requires just a Philips screwdriver (and a work permit, though I may not have been fully equipped).

Interesting video: http://www.acmelocksmith.com/lock_bumping.html

I have good locks on strong door and once locked myself out. Locksmith could not open. Groundsman climbed out on a ledge from the neighboring condo and jimmied my window open in 2 minutes. If they want to get in they will, thinking of replacing the windows with western spec.