Danville neighborhood · 24/7
Magee Ranch: the name on this van, the last streets before the open hills, and west faces with nothing standing between them and the afternoon
The south end of town where the houses stop and the grazed hills begin: lots backing onto open ground, no shade on the western walls from noon onward, and a staging area for the trails at the end of the road. Twenty-one minutes from the van.
~21 min
Avg. arrival
$89
Service call
24/7
Availability
This is where the idea behind this business is easiest to see, and it is why the name is on the van. A front door on these streets often faces open ground to the west with nothing between it and the sun for the whole second half of the day. The outside of the leaf spends August afternoons hot enough to be uncomfortable to touch while the hall behind it stays cool, and a solid slab does not stay perfectly flat through that. Add the swing between a winter night in the forties and a summer day over a hundred and the door you are looking at is not the same shape in July that it was in March. Nothing about the lock has changed. What has changed is where the bolt arrives.
The repair is small and dull, which is the point. Hinge screws are driven into the stud rather than into the jamb board, the keeper is moved and its mortise recut so the bolt lands in the middle of the hole again, and the edge of the leaf is eased where it has started to rub. Half the calls on these streets finish there, with no hardware sold and the original lock still on the door. It is worth doing at the first sign, when the key wants the door pulled toward you before it turns, rather than in the week when the bolt stops going home altogether and somebody starts putting a shoulder into it and splits the casing. A lock replacement, when a cylinder genuinely has reached the end, is $139 to $359.
Two things about this exposure are worth knowing before hardware is chosen. Batteries in a keypad on a west-facing door go flat sooner than the packet promises, so the override key is cut at the van the day the lock is fitted and tried in the cylinder while you watch, not left as a blank in a drawer to be discovered at eleven at night. And the dry months bring dust off the open ground straight into keyways on gates and outbuildings, which is what turns a padlock that closed fine in May into one that will not open in September. Neither of those is a reason to avoid a keypad. They are reasons to choose where it goes and to keep a working keyway underneath it. Smart lock installation is $215 to $529 and the spread is the door in front of the technician.
The rest is the ordinary work of houses at the edge of the open space. A house lockout is $145 to $265 with the $89 visit already counted in. Repinning after a purchase is $31 to $49 per cylinder and the count usually runs higher than expected once a gate and a shed are added. Cars parked at the staging area for the trails produce their own share: a lockout at $115 to $219, a fob at $99 to $215, a key cut and coded beside the vehicle at $169 to $455. Twenty-one minutes is the honest run and it is said before you decide to wait for it.
Say which way the trouble door faces, because a west-facing entry and a sheltered one on the same house are not the same job. If the key has been getting stiffer over a season rather than failing overnight, say so, since that is the cheap version of this repair. For a car at the trail parking, give the make, model, year and color and stay with it.
Nearby
Over the hill, the same van
FAQ
Asked about Magee Ranch
The front door locks fine in March and misses the hole in July. Is the lock wearing out?+
Almost never. That pattern is a calendar, not a fault, and a worn cylinder does not repair itself when the weather cools. The leaf and the frame move with the temperature, the keeper does not move with them, and the bolt ends up aiming at metal instead of at the hole. Moving the strike, putting proper screws into framing and easing the edge of the door fixes it for good, and the lock you already own stays where it is.
Should we just replace the deadbolt and be done with it?+
Only if the deadbolt is genuinely finished, and that verdict comes with the plate off the door and the cylinder in your hand, not down a phone line. Fresh brass in a leaf that has moved reproduces the fault within a month. The sequence on this street runs the other way round: the frame, the hinges and the keeper are dealt with, and hardware is only bought when the old piece has nothing left. Where that is the case, replacement is $139 to $359.
Is a keypad a bad idea on a door that gets this much sun?+
Not a bad idea, just one that needs planning. Cells run down faster on that face than the packaging suggests, so the mechanical override key gets cut and tested the day the lock is installed and you decide where it lives. If the door has settled, that is corrected before anything is screwed on, because a code cannot move a bolt into a hole it no longer reaches.
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.