Travel Gear: DoorJammer Portable Security Brace

How can you feel safe from intruders inside your hotel room? Numerous employees, from cleaning staff to security personnel, have access to keys or key cards to every room, not to mention bad guys who can bypass locks.

Bolting the door from the inside helps, but in more adventurous far-flung places and budget accommodations, you may get only a flimsy chain or bolt that a rush at the door will obliterate. I’ve stayed at retreats where the doors don’t even have locks.

Good thing, we’ve discovered an ingenious little metal door buttress that fits in the palm of your hand and can be installed into the base of the door in seconds, without any tools. The DoorJammer is a simple but ingenious configuration of hinges and angles that anchor it to the floor and against the door, exerting substantial bracing force against pressure from the outside.

Just slide the flange of the vertical door-hugging section into the space under the door, then “bolt” the connected hinged leg end firmly against the floor by screwing the big wing nut tightly down over the sturdy round adjustable metal gripping foot. An included molded neoprene extension foot provides extra grip on slippery, uneven, or deeply carpeted floors and compensates for doors with high thresholds. The engineers incorporated an easy-off mechanism for quickly removing the DoorJammer in an emergency.

Did we mention that this little barricade is barely 5 inches high and 3 inches wide and weighs about half a pound? The DoorJammer is not proof against every tough force, and it works only on doors that open inward. And windows are another matter. But it’s a great little security device for portable peace of mind.

DoorJammer is about $30 at door-jammer.com.