This door was also a tilt.
Tilt and slide door problems.
Tilt and slide patio doors can be prone to jamming or gradually becoming more difficult to operate over time as the mechanisms in the door wear down.
This is when trying to close the door it slides along fine but when going into the closing position one edge of the door will not sit in the frame thus making it impossible to turn the handle and lock.
Use a wire brush to clean off the dirt or debris.
If a malfunctioning sliding door is a chronic problem see if the track is dirty.
Most sliding doors have a mechanism called an adjusting screw located at the bottom of the door ends.
What happens is the slide rail falls off the tracks and ends up right at the back of the slot where the door slides into.
The patio doors gets jammed.
How to clean or fix a door track.
In these cases the problem is usually that the rollers at the bottom of the door have started to rub against the track.
When the drive gear fails you ll notice that there is a lot of resistance when you try to use the door.
Built up dirt or loose debris can cause a door to stop sliding and ride off the track.
Turning this screw raises or lowers the roller.
The rollers at the top can also wear down lowering the bottom of the door so that it rubs on the track.
In 2009 the telegraphreported that2 year old ruby jonesof great britain died when a sliding glass door came loose from its hinges and fell on top of her crushing her.
A common issue with tilt and slide doors is the alignment issue.