Danville and the San Ramon Valley · answered at any hour
The lock did not fail. The door moved away from it.
In March the key turns with one finger. By mid-July you put a shoulder into the leaf to make the bolt go anywhere, and by August it stops going in at all. Nothing inside the cylinder changed. This valley sits behind the ridge from the bay, a heat wave here runs past a hundred and a January night drops toward forty, and a wide solid entry hung on three hinges travels with all of it. The bolt quits finding the hole in the strike, the leaf quits meeting its stop square, and the thing that actually needs a screwdriver is a plate, a hinge or a shim.
Answered day and night — $89 for the visit, already folded into the figure you hear.
4.9 / 5167 reviewsDanville & the valley
Prices
All sixteen ranges, and what decides where you land inside one
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 far the door has walked away from its frame: a leaf and a strike still in line take the low end, a leaf that has moved with the season and a strike that has to be cut back into the jamb take the high one. Say how the door behaves when you pull it to, and the range closes to a single number on the call.
Emergency
from $115
Residential
from $31/cyl
Commercial
from $175
We quote the smallest thing that actually fixes it. A cylinder that has been fighting the key usually wants stripping and repinning, not replacing. A door that has settled wants its hinge screws and its strike put back in line, not new hardware bolted over the problem. Five doors that all want one key are a single rekey. Say the year the house was built and what stopped you when you call (925) 431-6470.
What we do
Sixteen jobs, and most of them start at the frame
A front door that locked all winter and will not lock in August, a gate fob that stopped opening the entrance, a side gate that latched behind somebody carrying shopping, a car locked at the trailhead with the fob on the seat, a shop door on Hartz Avenue that stopped throwing its bolt, a safe in the study whose combination left with the previous owner. Choose the work below and its range is printed here. Say how the door behaves when you pull it to, and the range comes back as one number.
from $115Emergency
Openings at any hour, with the door left closing properly afterward
- House Lockout$145–$265
- Car Lockout$115–$219
- Business Lockout$155–$285
- Post Break-In Lock Repair$185–$489
from $31/cylResidential
Strikes, hinges, rekeys, deadbolts and safes for doors that spend the year moving
- Lock Rekeying$31–$49 per cylinder
- Lock Replacement & Installation$139–$359
- Smart Lock Installation$215–$529
- Safe Opening$219–$589
from $175Commercial
Hartz Avenue storefronts, the offices above them and the small suites behind
- Master Key Systemscustom quote
- Panic Bars & Exit Devices$335–$849
- Access Controlcustom quote
- Storefront Door Locks$175–$519
from $99Automotive
Car keys, fobs and ignitions done where the car already stands, on the driveway or in the lot
- Car Key Replacement$169–$455
- Key Fob Programming$99–$215
- Ignition Repair$199–$495
- Motorcycle Keys$135–$315
On every job
The Frame Gets Looked At First
Four rules that behave the same on a Greenbrook tract house, a wide entry off Sycamore Valley Road, a gate fob in Blackhawk and a glass shop door on Hartz Avenue. Labor carries ninety days, written on the receipt where you can read it.
- 1The strike and the hinges get settled before anyone sells you hardwareA bolt that will not go home is usually a bolt arriving at the wrong height, and a new lock repeats the miss for more money. So the leaf is checked for square, hinge screws are driven long enough to bite framing, a shim goes behind the top hinge on a door that has dropped, and the strike is relocated with its mortise recut so the bolt falls straight through. A good share of these calls end right there, with no lock leaving the van. When one is genuinely needed you hear the reason, and it goes onto a door that can hold it.
- 2One figure, and the clock is already in itWhat you hear on the phone covers the visit, the labor and the parts together, with the $89 service call built in rather than waiting underneath. Arrive between 8pm and midnight and the figure carries $55, between midnight and 7am $95, and you learn that while you are still deciding. A jamb softer than it looked, a hinge screw stripped by somebody years ago, a strike mortise cut in the wrong place at the factory: none of it reopens the arithmetic.
- 3On a community gate, the question of who may order the work comes firstA fob, a remote or a key for your own house is yours to order and yours to pay for. Anything on a shared entrance, an entry gate, a pool door or a mail enclosure belongs to the association, and the board or the management company authorizes it, not the resident who happens to be standing at it. That gets asked on the phone rather than at the gate, so nobody drives out to a job that cannot legally start. Blackhawk and Crow Canyon Country Club both run this way, and so do the smaller gated streets.
- 4Ninety days, which here reaches into the next change of seasonNinety days on the work, and the warranty follows the carpentry as much as the lock. A relocated strike and a shimmed hinge are workmanship like anything else, so a door that closed cleanly in spring and starts catching again inside that window brings the van back at no charge. Parts carry the maker's own term. Everything is itemized on a receipt that lands in your email, and an owner, a manager or an insurer can be sent a written description whenever one is asked for.
Reviews
What people say after the door shut properly again
Strikes cut back into the jamb, hinges shimmed, cylinders repinned so one key covers the front door and the side gate, a fob replaced at a community entrance, a car opened at a trailhead, from the flat streets of Greenbrook up to the long drives of Blackhawk, each with the number that ended up on the card.
4.9/ 5167reviews
Danville & the valley
“By the second week of August I was putting my hip into the front door to get the deadbolt to turn, and I had already ordered a replacement lock online because I assumed ours had worn out. He looked at the jamb before he looked at the lock and showed me the bright scrape where the bolt had been hitting the plate instead of the hole. $228 for a new deadbolt, the strike dropped and its mortise recut, and two long screws through the top hinge into whatever is behind that trim. It has locked with one finger every day since, including the hot spell in September.”
“Our second gate remote had quit and my daughter was borrowing mine every morning. On the phone he asked whether the problem was our remote or the entrance itself, said plainly that anything on the gate goes through the association rather than through me, and then confirmed a spare for the household was mine to order. $185, coded in our driveway in about twenty minutes, and he drove out through the entrance to test it rather than taking my word. He also had the dead one struck off the list so it stops counting against what we are allowed.”
“The glass front door of our shop on Hartz Avenue had been dragging since summer and finally would not lock at closing. $340 for a new deadlatch, a cylinder and the closer reset. The first thing he did was bring the door back onto its pivot, because the hookbolt had been arriving under the keeper rather than into it, and he made me crouch down and watch the gap while he adjusted it. He worked after we shut with no conversation about the hour, and the card took what the phone call said.”
“Back from a walk in the open space behind the house at about nine at night, the wind pulled the door shut, and my keys were on the kitchen counter. $205 quoted with the $55 evening already inside it, and $205 is what I paid. Twenty-two minutes, which he warned me about up front because we sit at the far end of town. Picked open, nothing damaged, and while he was standing there he noticed the top hinge had two short screws in it and swapped them for long ones.”
“We closed in April and inherited a manila envelope of keys with no way of knowing who else had copies. Four cylinders at $36 apiece with the $89 visit inside the total, $233. Front door, the door from the garage into the house, the gate on the trail side and the slider, all one key now. He put new pins in what was already hanging there instead of selling me hardware, and cleaned and greased the gate latch for nothing because he said it had been cooking in the afternoon sun for years. Old keys came back in a labeled bag.”
“Fob on the passenger seat, doors locked, and there I was in the lot by the course on a genuinely hot afternoon holding a bag of clubs. $148 quoted, $148 charged. He had the door open with a wedge and a rod in a few minutes without marking anything, and he asked for my license before he touched the car even though I was obviously the one who had been playing. Four instead of five because the entrance held him up longer than either of us expected and it ran closer to thirty minutes than the twenty-three I was given. He had flagged the gate as the unknown when we spoke.”
Why us
The lock is the cheap half of a door that has moved.
The plate on the jamb is the first suspect, not the lock
Most of what stops a door in this valley is a quarter inch of movement between June and January. The bolt starts arriving above or below the hole, the leaf stops meeting its stop, and the household leans on it for a few weeks before calling anybody. So the visit starts at the frame: hinges anchored into framing, the leaf checked square, the stop and the weatherstrip looked over, the strike relocated and its mortise recut. Plenty of these calls finish without a lock being sold at all, and that shorter invoice is the point rather than an accident.
The van carries what Danville doors actually take
Long strikes and jamb reinforcement, hinge shims and three-inch screws, spare plates in several finishes so a moved strike does not read as a repair, deadbolts and handlesets sized for wide solid entries, narrow-stile hardware for a leaf with a sidelight beside it, keypad deadbolts with their override blanks and a machine to cut them, aluminum deadlatches, hookbolts and closer parts for the storefronts downtown, gate and community remotes, and blanks and programmers for most of what sits in the driveways here.
Nineteen minutes across eight neighborhoods, with the gated ones named as slower
There is no shop to visit, because a lock lives on a door and cannot be brought to a counter. From the base near Hartz Avenue, Downtown Danville is around 12 minutes, Westside 14, Greenbrook 16, Danville Station 17, Sycamore Valley 19, Magee Ranch 21, Crow Canyon Country Club 23, and Blackhawk 26 once the entrance and the run east are counted. Nineteen is the average of those. Where the honest number is worse, it gets said out loud while you are still deciding.
Ninety days in writing, and the warranty covers the carpentry
Ninety days on the labor, written on the receipt instead of hinted at, with the maker standing behind the part. A relocated strike and a shimmed hinge count as workmanship, so a door that starts catching again inside that window brings the van back without a charge. Everything is itemized and arrives by email, and a written description can go to an owner, a manager or an insurer whenever somebody needs one on file.
How it works
From a door that has walked to a bolt that lands again
- 1
Say what the door is doing, not what you think the lock is
Whether the key turns partway or not at all. Whether you have to push or lift the leaf to make it lock. Whether it started when the weather turned. Then the neighborhood, the decade the house went up, and whether a gate, a long driveway or a guard post stands between the curb and the door. If the trouble is on a community entrance rather than your own house, say so, because that changes who is allowed to order the work.
- 2
Hear the figure with the hour in it
A single number takes in the visit, the labor and the parts, with the $89 service call built in and the clock counted where it applies: $55 from 8pm, $95 after midnight. Should the fault you are describing turn out to be a spring or an opener motor on a garage door, you find that out during this call rather than after a van has crossed town. You answer with the number already in front of you.
- 3
The frame is put right, then the lock goes on
A text gives you the technician's name and a window drawn from where the van is standing at that moment, with the gate call-in allowed for if there is one. On arrival, ID goes against the address or a registration against the plate before any case is opened. Then hinges, leaf, stop and strike come back into line, and only after that does hardware go on and get tested by your own hand. Card or tap where you stand, itemized receipt by email, ninety days on the labor.
Coverage
Every part of Danville, and the valley around it
Average arrival 19 minutes across Danville, from twelve in the old centre to twenty-six out at Blackhawk, and longer to Alamo, San Ramon, Diablo, Walnut Creek, Dublin and Pleasanton. Every area page carries its own minute.
Free estimate
Four questions, then the same range this site publishes.
Not an emergency? Answer four questions and the published range for that work comes back on the screen, with nothing held behind a phone call. If it is urgent, the form steps aside and hands you the number.
- 1What went wrong?A lockout, a key, a lock change, or something else entirely.
- 2Where is the door?A house, an apartment, a car or a business.
- 3How soon?If it is right now, the form gets out of the way and you call.
- 4Where does the range go?A name and a number. Email and cross street only if you like.
Before you call anyone
Five things to ask before you hand over your address
A fair share of what sits above the map results is not a locksmith at all. It is a booking desk, often in another state, that takes your address, sells it to whichever van answers first, quotes a number small enough to say out loud, and collects three hundred once a cylinder has been drilled out of a door that would have picked open in four minutes. On the call this town actually makes, where the real fault is a strike plate, that ends with a household paying for hardware it never needed and a door that still has to be shouldered shut. The five questions below take about a minute between them, and anybody working straight answers all five without stalling.
- 1Ask what they intend to look at before quoting hardware. If nobody mentions the hinges, the strike or whether the leaf still closes square, they have priced a lock without thinking about your door.
- 2Ask for a single figure that already contains the $89 service call and the hour. A number trailed by up to, or by a promise that the technician will work it out on arrival, is not a price. It is a placeholder they intend to replace on your step.
- 3Ask which tools come out ahead of a drill, and what part goes on the door if the drill ends up winning. Anyone whose first answer involves drilling has thought about their schedule and not about your lock.
- 4If you live behind a gate, ask who they expect to authorize work on the entrance. A company happy to bill a resident for association equipment will be equally relaxed about who is left holding that invoice.
- 5Say no to cash only. An owner, an insurer, a management company or your own records all need an itemized receipt with a business name across the top, and a total scribbled on a pad is a record of nothing.
FAQ
The questions an old door raises
The key turned fine in March and barely turns now. Is the lock going?+
Rarely. Take the lock out of the picture for a moment and look at the jamb. A bright scrape on the strike plate above or below the hole means the bolt has been arriving at the wrong height and grinding on brass, which is a door that moved rather than a mechanism that failed. Summers here are hot and dry, winter nights get down near freezing, and a wide solid leaf follows that all year while the plate stays where it was screwed. The repair is hinge screws long enough to reach framing, a shim behind the top hinge, and the strike relocated with its mortise recut. It is the cheapest thing anyone will do to your house this year, which is why the first question on the call is about the season rather than the brand.
How soon does the van reach my street?+
Nineteen minutes is the citywide average, measured from the base near Hartz Avenue. Downtown Danville is about 12, Westside 14, Greenbrook 16, Danville Station 17, Sycamore Valley 19, Magee Ranch 21, Crow Canyon Country Club 23 and Blackhawk 26, the last two carrying the entrance and the run east. When your address is one of the slower ones you are told the slower number while you are still on the phone, instead of discovering it at minute thirty.
Two houses, the same lock, very different prices. What decides that?+
The door does. Three things move a job inside its range. What the leaf is doing, whether it still hangs square or has settled and taken to dragging on its stop. How much carpentry the hinges and the strike need before hardware is worth screwing down at all. And the clock, since a van arriving after 8pm carries $55 and after midnight $95. Settle those three on the phone and the range collapses to a single figure, which is the figure your card sees.
Is a call at eleven at night charged differently from a Tuesday afternoon?+
Weekends and public holidays are billed at plain daytime rates. Only the hour changes anything: $55 added between 8pm and midnight, $95 added between midnight and 7am. Both are worked into the quote before you agree to it, so nothing appears at the door that was not said on the phone. A house lockout at $165 in the afternoon comes back as $220 at ten in the evening and $260 at two in the morning, and those are the numbers on the receipt.
We live behind a gate. Can I order work on the entrance myself?+
On your own house, yes, and no permission is needed for a lockout, a rekey or a new deadbolt on a door you live behind. The entrance is a different matter. Gates, entry keypads, pool doors and mail enclosures are association property, so the board or the management company orders that work, and a resident who signs for it tends to find out afterward that they bought it personally. So the question gets asked while we are still on the phone. Your own fob or remote is a household item and takes a household order at $99 to $215. Anything done to the gate system itself is quoted to whoever runs the community.
My gate fob stopped working. Is that the fob or the gate?+
Usually the fob, and there is a two-minute test for it. If a neighbor's remote opens the entrance and yours does not, the fault is in your hand and a replacement is coded in your driveway. If nobody's remote works, the receiver or the head unit at the gate has dropped its programming, and that is association equipment and an association decision. Knowing which of the two you have before you call saves a trip. Households at Blackhawk and Crow Canyon Country Club also ask for a second remote for a teenager or a visiting parent, and that is an ordinary fob job.
I bought a keypad lock for a house built in 1988. Will it fit?+
The hardware will fit the hole. Whether the door can carry it is the real question. A motorized bolt has no shoulder to lean on, so a door that a person still has to push closed is a door the lock will fail on within a month. Before the keypad goes near it the hinges are anchored into framing, the leaf is brought back to square, the bore is checked for size and the strike is moved so the bolt drops through clean. Then the lock, then the codes you choose, then the override key cut in the van. That whole visit falls between $215 and $529, and what moves you inside that spread is the leaf, not the brand on the box.
The house just closed. Which keys should we deal with first?+
Start with the codes on any keypad, which takes two minutes and costs nothing, because the one you were handed at closing has been read by more people than you will ever be able to list. Then retire the metal keys with a rekey at $31 to $49 a cylinder, bringing the front door, the side gate and the garage-to-house door onto one blade while the van is at your curb. Last, walk the outside of the house and count the exterior doors. Most houses in this town have four or five and the household thinks about one. If any of them has to be pushed or lifted before it will lock, that is the one to point at, and the fix is usually a plate rather than a purchase.
I rent in Danville. What am I allowed to have done?+
Getting back into the place you pay rent on is entirely yours to arrange. Bring photo ID with the address on it, or ID plus something on your phone tying you to the unit, such as a lease page, a rent receipt or addressed mail. Changing the hardware is a separate matter and needs the owner or the property manager to say yes, whether that is a rekey, a new deadbolt or a keypad. Getting that agreement settled ahead of the call spares everybody a wasted trip, and the receipt can be made out to you, to the owner, or to both at once.
Do you go out to Alamo, San Ramon, Diablo, Walnut Creek, Dublin and Pleasanton?+
All six, around the clock, on the same price list Danville gets. Distance buys you a longer wait and nothing else. Alamo is about 15 minutes, San Ramon 20, Diablo 22, Walnut Creek 24, Dublin 27 and Pleasanton 29, against 12 to 26 within the city. The honest number for your address is given on the phone, before you have rearranged an afternoon around it. Two things and only two things change a figure anywhere in the valley: the condition of the door and the hour on the clock.
Open 24 hours, 7 days
Tell us whether the door has to be pushed before it locks, and the call is short
Danville and the San Ramon Valley, at any hour. The condition of the door sets the work and the work sets the price, so you get one number on the phone with the $89 service call and the hour already inside it, and that number is what the receipt shows. Ninety days on the labor, in writing, covering the frame as well as the lock.