Lock Rekeying in Alameda
$30 to $47 per cylinder. New pins go into the lock already hanging there, and every key handed out before today stops working. Your own flat door needs nobody else's permission. The street door, the mail row and the yard gate go through whoever holds the building. Cylinders after the first sit at the bottom of the range, since the van is already at the curb.
$30–$47 per cylinder
Typical price
18 min
Avg. arrival
24/7
Availability
Nothing else on this site does as much for as little. The lock stays screwed to the door. New bottom pins go in, a fresh key runs it, and every key issued before this morning stops working. The hardware is the same hardware afterward, the finish is untouched, and the only thing that has changed is the list of people who can walk in.
On this island the job comes with a question attached, and it is better asked before a van is booked than after one arrives. Your own flat door is yours. The entrance, the stair door, the yard gate and the mail row belong to the owner or the management company, and a single cylinder on a shared entrance carries keys held by every household at once. Repin that one and every neighbor needs a new key the same afternoon, which is straightforward when it has been arranged and a real problem when it has not. So we ask which cylinders are in scope, and where the shared ones are, we want confirmation from whoever holds them. What is owed between a resident and an owner is between them. Our part is only to ask first.
A change of household is the usual reason people call. The sensible shape is nearly always the same: the flat door repinned on the day, the mail box cylinder changed with it, and the entrance left alone unless the owner has asked for it. A purchase is the other reason, and there the honest advice is to count rather than guess. Sellers, an agent, a contractor, whoever was feeding the cat. Repinning takes that count down to the keys in your hand.
Prewar cylinders on these houses are generally better made than what would replace them, and a few minutes on the bench brings one back into service. Keyways permitting, a household can finish with the flat, the back door, the gate and a padlock all running off a single blade, which is the part people actually notice: one key to find on a dark porch instead of four. There is a limit, though, and it gets stated at the bench rather than glossed over. Salt air and a lot of seasons leave an outdoor gate plug worn oval, and no amount of careful pinning stops a worn plug from gripping a fresh key. Where that is the case, a replacement is quoted from the $127 to $332 band that governs new hardware, and you decide from there.
Repinning is $30 to $47 per cylinder. The $89 trip is counted once against the stop rather than against each lock, so four cylinders in one visit is a short hour of work. At the end, every dead key gets tested in every lock while you watch it do nothing. Watching them fail is the point of the exercise; the paperwork only records that it happened.
Sixteen jobs, fourteen of them with a range and two quoted once the openings have been counted on site. What moves a figure inside its range here is how many households the door serves: one cylinder and one key is the low end, while a street door that every flat carries a key to means a key plan rather than a lock, and that takes the high one. Say which door it is and who the building answers to, and the range closes to a single number on the call.
- Daytime (7am–8pm)standard rates
- Evening (8pm–12am)+$50
- Overnight (12am–7am)+$88
FAQ
Lock Rekeying: quick answers
A household has moved out upstairs. Which cylinders genuinely need to change?+
The flat door and its mail box, on the day, without argument. The entrance is a separate decision, because its key sits with every household in the building and changing it means new keys for all of them at once. Most owners here do the flat now and hold the entrance until several keys are missing, then do it once and hand the new ones out together.
I rent here. Can I book a repin at all?+
For your own door this is an everyday booking and it is most of what this page is. For the entrance, the stair or the mail row, we go to the owner or the manager for a word first. We are not making a judgment about what is owed to whom. We want the technician to turn up able to do the work.
We have just bought a building with four flats in it. What does a full repin come to?+
Count the cylinders and multiply. Each is $30 to $47, and the $89 trip is counted once for the whole stop, so the second, third and fourth doors are the cheap part of the afternoon. On a building that size the entrance, four flat doors, the gate and the mail row usually finish inside a morning, and the schedule of which key opens what is written down before anyone leaves.
Related
More residential services
Open 24 hours, 7 days
Say whether it is the street door or your own, and the rest of the call is short
Alameda and Bay Farm, at any hour. Which leaf it is decides who approves the work, the door itself decides the work, and the work decides the number, which is settled on the phone with the $89 visit and any late hour already inside it. It reads the same on the receipt. Ninety days on the labor, in writing.