Master Key Systems in Redwood City
One key that opens every door and tenant keys that open one, planned and quoted in writing per building.
custom quote
Typical price
21 min
Avg. arrival
24/7
Availability
A master key system lets one key open every door a manager needs while each tenant, clinician or shift lead carries a key that opens only what belongs to them. Redwood City runs a great many of them. A medical office building near Sequoia Hospital with twenty suites and a shared records room. An apartment building near Courthouse Square whose owner is tired of a ring the size of a fist. A firm on Seaport Blvd that sublets half a floor. A Redwood Shores HOA with a pool gate, a gym, a mail room and forty units. Sequoia Lock & Key designs the system, pins it, and hands over the paperwork that lets you run it without calling anyone.
The system exists on paper before it exists in brass. After a walk-through with a floor plan and a plain conversation about who needs which doors and who must be kept out of which, the technician draws the levels: perhaps a grand master over a portfolio, a master for each building or floor, sub-masters for a wing or a department, and a change key at every door. Beneath all of it goes a restricted keyway, so a copy cannot be run off at a hardware counter; that is how one tenant key becomes three without anyone noticing. Each cylinder is pinned at the van with master pins over the change pins and tested in its own door. Every key is stamped with its level and entered in a log by number. You receive the chart showing which key opens which door, with empty rows left for next year's additions so they join this system rather than starting a second one.
There is no single published figure for a master key system, because the number of doors, the keyway and the restricted-key option decide the cost, and a flat price would be a guess dressed up as a promise. The written quote lists each cylinder by door, each key by level, and the design work once. The $89 service call pays for the survey and is credited to the job. After you approve the quote it does not move. Repinning a single door later, when a tenant leaves, stays within the system at $25 to $41 per cylinder.
Tell us the doors: the count and the kind of building. Hear the figure read back in writing, chart and itemized quote together, after the survey, with installation booked once you approve. Watch it fitted: each cylinder pinned and tested in its own door, keys handed over logged and signed for. Pay what was read, with a receipt itemized cylinder by cylinder.
“Our 1926 house has the original mortise lock and I managed to shut the door with the only working key on the kitchen table. The call gave me $139 and a text with a name arrived while I was still standing on the porch. The technician had the door open in a few minutes with the brass untouched, then showed me how the old key was worn and why it had started sticking. $139 on the card, receipt in my email before he reached the van.”
Every job is priced from the list below. The figure is settled on the call, before the van turns its own key, and the receipt shows the same figure.
- Daytime (7am–8pm)standard rates
- Evening (8pm–12am)+$50
- Overnight (12am–7am)+$85
FAQ
Master Key Systems: quick answers
We manage a Redwood Shores HOA: forty units, a pool gate, a gym and a mail room. What does the system look like?+
Three levels. Residents carry a change key for their own unit that also opens the pool gate and the gym. The mail room sits on its own sub-master held by the carrier and the manager. The management company holds the master. When a unit changes hands, only that unit's cylinder is repinned.
Our building near Courthouse Square already has decent commercial cylinders. Do they all come out?+
Usually not. Cylinders from the major commercial makers take master pins without complaint. One in a keyway that cannot join the system, or one worn so far that an extra pin stack would make it stick, is exchanged, and the quote shows each such cylinder as its own line so the count is known before anyone starts.
The office manager left the master key in a taxi. What now?+
Only the doors under that master are repinned, which is the case for keeping the levels narrow rather than putting one key over the whole building. With a restricted keyway underneath, a copy of the lost key almost certainly does not exist, so the exposure is one physical key rather than an unknown number.
Related
More commercial services
24/7 — nights, weekends & holidays
One call, one figure, settled before the van turns the key
Calls answered 24/7 for Redwood City and the towns beside it. One figure for the visit, the labor and the parts, with the $89 service call inside it, and a receipt that matches it line for line.