Smart locks that actually work with thick Pueblo front doors (and which to skip)

You bought a smart lock. You followed the instructions. And then you held the deadbolt against the door, felt it catch on something, and realized the spindle is about a quarter-inch too short to make contact with the interior assembly. The lock just spins.

This happens a lot in Pueblo. Bessemer, Mesa Junction, and Bojon Town are full of homes built before 1960, and many of them have original solid-wood front doors that sit closer to 2 inches thick than the 1-3/4" that almost every smart lock on a hardware store shelf is built for. That small gap is enough to make a $200 lock completely useless out of the box.

The good news: there are locks that actually handle thick doors. The bad news: the packaging usually does not tell you this clearly.

Why door thickness matters so much

Most smart locks are rated for doors between 1-3/8" and 1-3/4" thick. That covers the majority of homes built after the 1970s using hollow-core or standard solid-core doors. But if your door is an older hardwood slab, or anything that pushes past 1-3/4", the interior and exterior lock halves cannot bridge the gap. The tailpiece spindle ends up too short. The deadbolt cannot throw.

Here is a simple way to check before you buy anything. Grab a tape measure and measure your door from the inside face to the outside face at the lock area, not at the edge. If it reads 1-3/4" or under, any standard smart lock should work. If it reads between 1-7/8" and 2-1/4", you need a specific model. Over 2-1/2" and you are probably looking at a commercial door, which is a different conversation.

67% of homes in Bessemer Northeast were built before 1939. If you are in that area and your door feels heavy and solid, there is a real chance it is not a standard 1-3/4" thick.

Three locks that handle thicker doors

Yale Assure Lock 2 is probably the cleanest solution for doors up to 2-1/4" thick. Yale ships the lock with two different screw sets: one for standard doors and one for thicker doors up to 2-1/4". There is no separate kit to hunt down. If your door is in that range, you just use the hardware labeled for it. The lock supports Bluetooth and Wi-Fi depending on the model, and it works with Apple Home, Google Assistant, and Amazon Alexa. The one downside is the touchscreen keypad is less responsive in cold weather. Worth knowing for a Pueblo winter.

Schlage Encode Plus is the right pick if your door runs between 1-7/8" and 2-1/2" thick. The standard lock covers up to 1-3/4", but Schlage sells the B489106 thick door kit separately for around $25 to $30. The kit includes a longer tailpiece spindle and extended through-bolts. Swap it in, and you gain about ten extra minutes of installation time but get a lock rated to 2-1/2". The Encode Plus has built-in Wi-Fi, no hub required, and works natively with Apple HomeKit. Schlage is known for build quality, and it shows. The trade-off is cost: the lock plus the kit puts you around $300 total.

August Wi-Fi Smart Lock works differently from the other two, and that actually matters here. The August is a retrofit device. It clips over your existing deadbolt on the interior side and automates the thumbturn you already have. Door thickness mostly stops being a factor, as long as your existing deadbolt is already seated and aligned. If you have a working deadbolt that throws cleanly, August is the lowest-friction path to smartphone control. The catch: if your deadbolt is misaligned or sticky, August inherits that problem. It cannot fix a deadbolt that was already struggling.

Two locks to skip on a thick door

Wyze Lock Bolt (original) has a hard cap of 1-3/4" for door thickness. There is no thick door kit, no workaround, no extension hardware the manufacturer supports. Wyze released a v2 version with a wider range, but the original is still on shelves and easy to accidentally buy. If the packaging says max 1-3/4", do not assume that is approximate.

Unbranded smart locks from generic Amazon listings are a gamble you do not want to take on a thick door. The specs are often missing, wrong, or copied from a different product entirely. We have seen customers buy these, assume the 1-3/4" max is a rough number, and end up with a lock that leaves a gap between the interior plate and the door surface. Beyond not working, that gap exposes the mechanism to weather and tampering. Skip it entirely.

The two DIY snags that catch people off guard

Even with the right lock for your door thickness, two installation steps trip people up regularly.

Bore hole prep is the first one. Smart locks require a 2-1/8" face bore and a 1" edge bore. Older homes sometimes have edge bores done by hand with a spade bit, which can end up slightly oval or off-center. If you are hitting resistance when tightening the mounting screws and the lock rocks, stop and look before forcing it. Forcing it strips the door.

Strike plate alignment is the second one. The deadbolt can throw, the lock can respond to your phone, and everything seems fine until you try to lock the door while it is closed. Then the bolt catches the frame slightly high or low and will not seat. Mark the bolt face with a grease pencil, close the door, throw the bolt, open it back up. The smear on the frame shows you exactly where the bolt is landing. If it is off by more than 1/8", you need to move the strike plate or chisel out the mortise a bit. Common in older frames where the wood has shifted over decades.

When to stop and call someone

There is a line. If your bore holes need to be recut, the strike plate mortise needs significant work, or the door frame itself has sagged or warped, that is locksmith territory. Forcing hardware into a misaligned frame is how you end up with a door that does not close right or a deadbolt that binds under load.

We handle smart lock installs as part of our Care plans and as one-time jobs quoted per door. That covers measuring the frame, selecting the right hardware for the thickness, any bore prep needed, and confirming the bolt seats cleanly before we leave. If you are already on a Care plan, smart lock installs are included. If you just want one lock done right without a subscription, give us the door measurements and we will send a flat-rate quote.

Most doors in the 1-3/4" range are fine for a confident DIYer with a drill and a free afternoon. Doors pushing 2" or thicker, or anything where the frame has moved over the years, are usually faster and cheaper to hand off to someone who has done it before.