While locksmiths are busy quite frequently with lock rekeying, repairs, auto keys, and commercial lock services, the other aspect of the business is lockouts. For this particular article, we will discuss home and even some commercial lockout situations. This will help to prevent a house lockout. Its never fun to walk back to your door only to find that you’ve accidentally locked yourself out. It seems to happen when its the most inconvenient of times usually. This of course happens when you are the only one home or at the office. There are a couple things that can prevent this from happening.
Option 1: This one will be more suited to your house locks primarily. Most homes nowadays have two locks on each exterior or entry door. In the past most folks have a deadbolt and a locking know or lever on each door. For the most part, the locking knob or lever was a way to have the door latch when its closed. Depending on how the doors swings open, sometime a thin device could be used to bypass the latch mechanism and get by a locked know or lever. Because of the design of some locks, you could lock yourself out without really noticing it. In these cases, calling a locksmith may be the best option to avoid damaging your door or locks trying to get back in.
Fast forward to most modern homes now, the same premise of having two locks on each door is still common. Most exterior doors that you buy most likely have these holes drilled into them already and prepped for two locks. The advice I’d give, and what you’ll notice on alot of newer homes, is the deadbolt is used as the lock for the door, and the lever or knob is a passage function. The passage function means that it the knob or lever doesn’t actually lock, but is just designed to latch when the door is closed. For potential lockouts, this design with a deadbolt and passage function knob or lever basically takes care of almost all lockout possibilities. You can’t accidentally lock a deadbolt and shut the door. So if your even buying new locks, consider buying the traditional deadbolts and passage knobs or levers.
Now for commercial situations. Most commecial locks are designed a bit different. The traditional two lock options that are used on houses aren’t gerneally used in commercial settings. This is mainly due to fire code regualtions. So to prevent lockouts here, the use of a lockbox secured to an outside door, or secured to the wall of your building is a great way to prevent anything from happening. You can hide the lockbox out of view. These lockboxes can be purchased online, at your local hardware store, or possibly with your local locksmith while he or she is there working on your locks. This method can be used at home too as a hide a key method as well. Just make sure to put the lockbox in a discreet location if at all possible.
As a locksmith, the use of a passage knob or lever and a hidden key in a lockbox would take care of 95% or more of the residential and commercial lockout calls I receive. Locksmiths services, just like most other services have gotten expensive. You may not need a locksmith now, but may someday. Make the process easier by either employing these simple and affordable options to keep you from locking out an employee, or loved one, or yourself. If you do need a locksmith and happen to be in the Phoenix, AZ area, reach out to Agent Lock And Key locksmith of Peoria.
