UPVC Door Handle Snapped

This customer snapped the handle on their UPVC back door.

It takes quite a lot of force to break a handle, so there is usually an underlying reason for it to require so much force to lock / unlock.

In this case, it was the door being misaligned. This was causing the hooks & rollers of the mechanism to bind against the strikeplate, making it extremely tough to lift & depress the handle. Over time this stressed the handle enough to break it.

We replaced the broken handle with a new one, & also recommended a door realignment to ensure these handles don’t meet the same fate, along with making sure the gearbox doesn’t break at the same time, as that would be a costly fix!