Locksmith in Chorleywood

Big plots, old doors: what Chorleywood asks of a locksmith

Chorleywood is not a town of terraces. Much of WD3 is detached houses on wooded plots, a good many of them Edwardian Arts-and-Crafts builds with heavy timber front doors that were never meant to be replaced, plus the cottages clustered around the Common and later homes on the Station Estate and out towards Loudwater. A timber door of that era carries a rim nightlatch up top and a lever mortice deadlock lower down, both of which wear in their own way, while the houses whose owners swapped to uPVC or composite now depend on a euro cylinder and a multipoint strip that is often 20 years old. Add French doors, side doors, garages and the odd annexe and a single property can have six or seven locking points. The work that follows from all that:

• Lockouts on heavy timber and on uPVC doors, opened by picking or manipulation rather than drilling wherever the lock permits.
• Seized, sloppy or worn-out mortice and rim locks on the older houses, serviced or replaced inside a door that is worth keeping.
• Multipoint gearboxes on uPVC and composite doors that no longer throw their hooks, or doors that have sagged and now bind at the top corner.
• Upgrades from the plain euro cylinders that lock-snapping targets to 3-star anti-snap units.
• Keyed-alike suites and spare keys, so one key covers every door on the plot.

Where an intruder tries first on a hedged plot

Anyone breaking in would rather work on a door that cannot be seen from the road. On a Chorleywood plot with a long drive and mature hedging, the side door, the garden doors and the garage are screened from every neighbour, and they are usually the weakest locks on the property: a two-lever mortice on a side door, a surface bolt on a garden gate, a French door with a single latch. Bringing the perimeter level with the front door is a half-day of residential lock work that pays for itself. That means a proper deadlock on timber side doors, rack bolts top and bottom on French doors, hinge bolts on any door that opens outward so the hinge pins cannot be driven out, and a keyed-alike cylinder set so the household does not end up carrying a bunch of eight keys. Kenny sizes each cylinder to its door so nothing protrudes past the handle, which is what a snapping attack needs to get a grip.

Restricted keys and what key control actually means

For the larger houses around the Common and Loudwater, owners often want to go past the insurer’s minimum, and the sensible step is a high-security cylinder with key control. Ultion and Mul-T-Lock both make TS007 3-star cylinders whose keys are patented: a key cutter cannot copy them without a registration card, so the number of keys in existence is the number you were handed and no more. That matters when cleaners, builders, gardeners and previous owners have all held keys at some point. The cylinders themselves have anti-snap sacrificial cuts, anti-drill pins and anti-bump mechanisms, and start from £95 fitted. Kenny also fits Yale, ERA, Winkhaus and Fullex hardware, choosing by door and by policy rather than by whatever happens to be in the van, and the lock replacement and rekey service covers the whole range. If you want the theory, our guide to anti-snap locks explains why a 3-star cylinder survives what a plain one does not. Anti-snap lock fitting in Chorleywood takes well under an hour per door.

Reviving a seized mortice lock rather than replacing it

The five-lever mortice deadlocks on Chorleywood’s Edwardian doors were built to be serviced, and a lock that has gone stiff or stopped turning is rarely beyond help. Inside the case, five spring-loaded levers must each be lifted to exactly the right height by the key before the bolt stump can pass through their gates; decades of paint, dust and dried grease stop them moving freely, and a worn key rounds the edges that do the lifting. Stripping the lock, cleaning the levers, replacing tired springs and cutting a fresh key from the lock rather than from an old worn key usually brings it back. Where the lock is beyond saving, a BS3621 five-lever replacement goes into the same mortice from £120, and the original brass furniture goes back on so the door looks untouched from the street. That is the answer for anyone whose insurer wants a kitemarked lock but who does not want a period door disturbed; the guide to BS3621 and home insurance has the detail.

When the door will not open at all

Being locked out in WD3 late at night is unpleasant when the nearest neighbour is a hundred yards away behind a hedge. Ring 07904 594452, say it is a lockout, and it becomes the next job. The approach is always the least destructive one first: a slipped nightlatch, a picked cylinder, a lever lock read with a pick, and only where a high-security cylinder resists everything else does a drill come out, with a replacement fitted and keys cut on the spot. Roughly 95 per cent of lockouts end with no damage. A daytime lockout costs from £85 and one after dark from £110, and that is the figure you are given before Kenny sets off. The emergency lockout page describes the process step by step, and if you want the long version there is a guide to what to do if you are locked out.

From Ickenham to the Chenies border

The business sits at 87A Long Lane, Ickenham, and has covered Chorleywood since 2006: the Common and the cottages around it, the Station Estate, Loudwater, the homes off Rickmansworth Road and out towards the Chenies border. A 24 hour locksmith near Chorleywood Common is not a special dispatch; the same van covers Rickmansworth, Amersham and Watford. Whether it is an emergency locksmith in Chorleywood at 3am, a uPVC door repair in Chorleywood, or a planned upgrade of every door on the plot, call 07904 594452 and Kenny will quote a single price by phone. Our pricing page carries the from price for each of the common jobs.