House Lockout in San Francisco

Three different calls arrive under this heading and they are worth separating, because they are three different jobs behind the same door. The first is the ordinary one: the door shut behind you, the lock is in perfect health, and the only thing between you and your kitchen is a latch. The second is the one this city produces more than any other: the key went stiff over a couple of winters, then it started turning halfway and needing a particular wiggle, and this evening it stopped turning at all. The third is the end of the second, which is a blade snapped off in the keyway, usually on a cold morning, usually by somebody in a hurry who had been getting away with it for a year.

Which one you have is mostly decided by where in the city you live. West of Twin Peaks, marine air comes off the water carrying salt, and salt gets into the cylinder through the keyway and pits the pins and springs, whose entire working tolerance is a fraction of a millimetre. A plain brass cylinder on a street-facing door in the Sunset, the Richmond or out toward Ocean Beach runs three to six years. East of the hill, in the Mission, Noe Valley or up on Bernal, the identical part on an identical door runs ten to fifteen. So on the phone the useful question is not how old your lock is, it is which avenue you are on and how long the key has been difficult.

The opening itself is done cold, with the tools chosen once the technician can see what is actually in the door. A tired cylinder gives up quickly. A seized one takes longer and is no more trouble at the end of it. A snapped blade is extracted rather than drilled around wherever the keyway allows. Sliding doors are worked at the latch and never at the panel. If a lock genuinely refuses every non-destructive route, that gets said out loud and drilling becomes your decision rather than a surprise, and saying yes to it does not move the number you were quoted. If the cylinder has to be replaced, a new one goes in on the same visit rather than on a second trip.

One boundary, stated here because it comes up most on this page. We are locksmiths: locks, cylinders, deadbolts, keypads, keys, gates and the doors those things hang in. Buzzer panels, intercom wiring, the door release wired to an intercom and anything to do with a lift are electrical work and belong to a different trade. If your buzzer is dead and you are standing on the pavement, we can get you through the gate lock or the lobby cylinder tonight, and the panel is a call for your building on a weekday.

The visit runs $135 to $249 and the $89 service call is inside that number rather than added underneath it. Ordinary hardware, one door, daylight: $135. It climbs toward $249 with a second locked door behind the first, a high-security cylinder, an extraction, or a replacement cylinder fitted on the spot. From 8pm to midnight the plain door is $190 and from midnight to 7am it is $230, arithmetic done before you hear a figure so that nothing appears while you stand outside. Say what the key is doing when you call, give the cross street, and the van leaves Divisadero with a text naming the technician and a thirty-minute window.