Smart Lock Installation in Mountain View
$205–$505. A keypad or app lock fitted into a door prepared for it, with the codes you choose entered twice before the technician leaves. The override blank is cut at the van the same day and turned in the cylinder while you watch.
$205–$505
Typical price
18 min
Avg. arrival
24/7
Availability
In this city the electronic part of getting home is usually already there and it is not yours. The lobby, the garage gate and the package room read a credential that the building issues. A smart lock is a separate thing entirely: it goes on your own door, it answers to you, and it does nothing at all to the doors downstairs. Keeping those two apart in your head is most of what people want explained on this call.
On a rented door the question of whether one can go on is settled on the call, between you and the building, before hardware is bought. Plenty go on with the original lock kept whole in a bag and put back at the end, which is the arrangement most people end up with and it costs nothing to plan for.
The door decides how long the visit takes. A smart lock is machined for a cross bore of two and one eighth inches, a backset of two and three eighths or two and three quarters, and a leaf that still hangs square. Doors on the older streets often answer none of those, and after decades on three hinges a leaf can drop enough that the bolt meets the lip of the strike instead of the pocket. A hand shoves through that resistance without noticing. A motor cannot, so it stalls, retries and drains the cells, and the lock gets blamed for the door. So the hinges are shimmed, the strike moved and its pocket recut, or the bore opened to size with a jig, and then the lock goes on, in the same visit.
One condition is worth insisting on whatever the model: keep a working keyway. Cells go flat on the worst possible morning, and a door with no mechanical route in is a lockout waiting to be scheduled. That is the same argument this shop makes about the reader downstairs, one floor up. Where the model keeps a cylinder, it is pinned to the key already on your ring and a metal key is cut at the van before anyone leaves. Setup happens with you standing there: the app goes on your phone rather than the technician's, you enter the first codes yourself, you add one and delete one while somebody who knows the menus watches, and the installer default does not stay on a door this shop has fitted.
Installation is $205 to $505 with the $89 visit inside it, and the spread has little to do with which lock you bought. A leaf that hangs true, a bore already at size and a strike where it should be is the $205 end and a short visit. A dropped leaf that needs shimming, a strike to relocate, or a narrow old bore to open is the $505 end, which is carpentry followed by a lock. Between 8pm and midnight add $52, making the $205 job $257, and overnight add $92, making it $297. Ninety days on the workmanship.
“We put a keypad on the front door so the dog walker stops needing a key under the pot. $415, one visit, quoted figure and charged figure the same. What I had not realized is that the lock has a metal cylinder under a cover on its underside, and the blank in the box had never been cut. He cut it at the van, turned it in the lock while I watched, and told me to keep it anywhere except inside the house it opens. He also squared the door before fitting anything, because it had dropped far enough on its hinges that the bolt was catching the edge of the hole.”
All sixteen jobs are printed here, fourteen with ranges and two quoted once the doors have been counted on site. What moves a figure inside its range is which door it is and how it opens. One cylinder on a house in the old part of town takes the low end. A door that reads a credential, with a mechanical cylinder under the panel that has not been turned in years, takes the time that cylinder has been owed. Say which door stopped you and the range closes to one figure.
- Daytime (7am–8pm)standard rates
- Evening (8pm–12am)+$52
- Overnight (12am–7am)+$92
FAQ
Smart Lock Installation: quick answers
Will a smart lock on my apartment door get me into the building?+
No, and it is worth being clear about it before you buy one. The lobby, the garage gate, the package room and the mail hall read the credential the building issues from its own list, and a lock fitted to your unit door has nothing to do with that list. What you gain is your own door on a code or a phone. What happens downstairs stays with the building.
The lock is already in a box on my table. Will you fit it?+
Usually yes, and the visit starts at the door rather than at the box. If the leaf has dropped or the bore is narrow, that work happens first, which is what moves the figure inside $205 to $505. If the model genuinely will not suit your door, you hear that with the reason before anything is unscrewed, and the decision stays yours.
We put the lock on ourselves and it jams and drinks batteries. Bad unit?+
Probably not. That is the exact signature of a bolt catching the edge of its strike. A hand pushes through the resistance without noticing, a motor cannot, so it retries, stalls and drains the cells. The fix is the strike and the way the door hangs, not a replacement lock, and it is checked before anything is quoted.
What happens when the batteries die?+
Nothing, if the door keeps a keyway and the key exists. That is why a cylinder is kept where the model has one, pinned to the key you already carry, and a metal key is cut at the van on the day of the install. Keep it somewhere other than the ring in your pocket. Most keypad calls here come from doors where that key was never cut.
Related
More residential services
Open 24 hours, 7 days
Say what the door reads, and the rest of the call is short
Mountain View and the mid-Peninsula, at any hour. A fob, a card, a code or a plain key, and how many doors stand between the sidewalk and you — that decides the work, and the work decides the number. The number comes back on the same call with the $89 call-out and the clock already inside it, and it is the number on the receipt. The labor carries 90 days, in writing.