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Door sensor magnets are stronger than I thought, and that scared me
I read on a manufacturer spec sheet last week that a typical recessed magnet can hold through 2 inches of drywall, which made me check every metal door frame in my 5-year-old installs and now I'm wondering how many of you actually verify mounting depth before you drill.
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betty_shah25d ago
Hold up, a recessed magnet holding through 2 inches of drywall is not how these things work in real life. The pull force on a spec sheet is measured with the magnet and its matching contact plate touching, and every bit of air gap or material between them kills that number fast. Steel loses something like half its pull with just a small gap, and by the time you get to an inch of drywall there is barely anything left. Nobody is drilling through 2 inches of drywall for a door sensor anyway, most of those are surface mount or drilled into a 3/4 inch frame. The real thing to check is not depth but whether your magnet and switch are actually lined up and within the gap the maker calls for, usually a quarter inch or less for recessed ones. So your door frames are fine, the spec sheet was just talking about a test setup that does not match real walls.
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