This is for a larger modern style home and the drops are huge. One wall has two 7' wide by 10' tall doors making for a 14'x20' opening and both are on hanging sliders. Each weighs around 500 pounds but can easily be moved with one hand.

any way we have about a dozen of these doors and I'm tryin to figure out a way to have hidden sensors, avoiding surface mounted.

some pics

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 These look like aluminum doors. Be sure to use wide gap type sensors.
 I use G.E. (Sentrol) 1275W. These have been our standard sensor for years. You can useually make them always work. Once in a while you'll need a larger magnet (solid 3/8") to get a bigger gap. They also make other types of sensors that may work for you. 
 You may have to be creative on placement. 

If its aluminum it doesnt matter. Steel does. For contacts I only use Nascom.

 I think they are steel. The windows and doors for this house were $375k plus installation. 

On the top, first, picture, I have to get a sensor on the outside track. there doesn't appear to be anyway to get a magnet on the door (shouldn't have taken a pic of that too). Wondering if we should be using some plunger style maybe. 

Also, not really sure about drilling a hole on the track side with all the different grooves. 

 we'll be getting started on this today, I'll take some better pics. 

A lot of doors we run into you can not put magnets in because there is like a 3/4"
steel plate on the sides........ not a great description, but maybe you will know
what I mean. if that's the case you can usually put the contact on the top frame and the magnet in the door.

I use plungers for a lot of doors. 3/4" hole and then this combo.
PB-2020T and then adapter.
[Link: grisk.com]
[Link: grisk.com]

 plunger contacts are definitely the way to go on the sliding doorwall.  

Possibly an end to end on the pedestrian door?  


I'd do my level best to not mount any type of surface mount contact on the doors.  Who wants to ugly up a door that cost more than my house?  Not me.

This is where someone needs to invent a door contact that is built into the latching mechanism. Magnet in the latch assembly/face plate, contact in the strike plate...or vice versa. Wired or wireless options. Someone just needs to build it...that is all.

Why use the recess adapter and not just the 3/8" contact by itself?

Because the plastic spacer creates a gap between the magnet and the steel door. Helps to keep the door from getting magnetized and keeping the magnetic field where it operates the contact correctly.

steel --> spacer --> magnet <-- spacer <-- steel

But this (what he linked and what I'm using) is a plunger contact?

im now trying to figure out two of the real custom doors which don't latch to a jam but in a corner to each other. My best thought is to use a roller ball plunger at the top. 

EVERY door that I do gets a 3/4" hole.
It will make your life easier for sure.

Today I had to land the front door security contact for the door that was just installed. On both sides of the doors, there are 18" wide fixed windows and
there are maybe 2" dividers between panes of glass to get wire through. Keep in mind, these are solid wood dividers that have to be drilled through.
I have seen these done with a 3/8" hole and there is for the most part, NO way
to leave any extra length of wire for service. There are to many times, where there was no way to push the wire back in order to get the contact in place. If
you have a 3/4" maybe 1 1/2" or 2" deep, you have plenty of room to leave enough extra wire to be able to service when needed.

What happens if you have a 3/8" hole, and find out that a contact or that 3/8" plunger will not work and have to use a roller ball that requires a 3/4" hole.
Kinda hard to drill out that hole to 3/4" because your security wire is already
in there :-)

It's one small thing, but it makes my life easier, and is one less thing I have to worry about. As if we don't already have enough things to deal with :-)

Good call on the 3/4" hole, have you seen these for enlarging holes?
[Link: lsdinc.com]