Category: Home Security

Smart locks are good products sold badly. The marketing is about convenience, and the things that actually decide whether you are still happy in two years never appear on the box.

We fit these, we like them, and we also get called out to rescue them — disproportionately between December and February. Here is what to know before you buy, and what to do if you already own one.

What They Genuinely Solve

Let us be fair first, because the benefits are real:

• No keys for children to lose. A code cannot be dropped in the snow or left in a coat at a friend’s house.
• Access you can revoke instantly. A cleaner, a dog walker, a contractor — give a code, delete it the day it stops being needed. You cannot un-issue a key.
• Scheduled access. A code that only works on Tuesday afternoons is a genuinely useful thing that mechanical keys cannot do.
• You know when people come and go. Notifications when the door is opened, which for a lot of parents is the whole selling point.

Failure Mode 1: The Battery, And Why January

A motorised deadbolt draws real current every time it cycles. Cold reduces the capacity of a battery significantly — a cell that would have lasted until spring in a mild climate gives up at minus twenty.

The result is that low-battery warnings in Whitby cluster in exactly the weeks when you least want to be standing outside dealing with it. The fix is trivial and almost nobody does it: change the batteries on a schedule, twice a year, and ignore the warning entirely. Do it when the clocks change and it never becomes an event.

Failure Mode 2: The Keypad Itself In Cold

Touch-sensitive and capacitive keypads can behave unpredictably in deep cold, and they do not always cope with a gloved hand. Physical push-button keypads are less elegant and considerably more reliable in a Canadian winter.

Check the manufacturer’s rated operating temperature range before you buy, and treat the claimed lower limit as optimistic rather than conservative.

Failure Mode 3: The Cloud

A Wi-Fi lock depends on your router, your internet connection, and a manufacturer’s service continuing to exist. That last one is not hypothetical — products in this category have stopped working when a company shut a service down.

A keypad lock that stores its codes locally keeps working through an outage, a router failure and a corporate decision. If you want remote access, fine — but make sure the lock still functions completely without it.

Failure Mode 4: Nobody Owns The Admin

This is the most common problem we are called to fix, and it is not technical at all.

A house sells and the smart lock stays. The new owners have hardware they cannot administer: codes they did not set, an app tied to somebody else’s email address, and no idea who else still has access. Or an installer set it up and kept sole administrative control.

If you cannot personally add and remove users, you do not control your own front door. Most locks can be factory reset from the interior unit and re-enrolled to a new account with fresh codes — but it needs doing deliberately, not left.

Failure Mode 5: The Door Itself

The one that matters most and gets discussed least. A smart lock changes who can open your door politely. It changes nothing about who can open it rudely.

A forced entry does not defeat a cylinder or outsmart an app. It splits the jamb trim beside the lock with one kick, because a standard strike plate is held by two short screws reaching only a thin strip of wood nailed to the frame.

Fit a box strike with three-inch screws into the structural stud and long screws in the top hinge before you spend anything on electronics. It costs a fraction as much and it is the part that actually stops a break-in.

The Buying Checklist

1. Does it have a mechanical key override?
2. Does it work without the internet?
3. What is the rated operating temperature?
4. Will it fit your door — thickness, backset, and is it a multipoint or mortise door?
5. Will you hold the admin account from day one?
6. Is the frame reinforced yet? If not, do that first.

If You Already Have One

Three things this week: change the batteries regardless of what the app says, change the installer or factory code, and confirm you can add and remove users yourself. Then find the mechanical key and put it somewhere sensible that is not inside the house.

More on home security systems, or call 647-330-7919 — including if you have inherited a lock nobody can log into.

Possession day is chaos and security is the last thing on anyone’s mind. But the first week in a new house is the cheapest and easiest time to deal with all of this, because you are already living among boxes and nothing feels like a disruption.

Here is the list, in order of how much difference each one makes.

1. Rekey Every Exterior Door

You do not know how many keys to your new house exist. Previous owners, their adult children, a cleaner, a dog walker, the trades who worked on it before the sale, the listing agent, and a lockbox that a dozen buyer agents opened during showings. All legitimate at the time. None of it tracked.

Rekeying changes the pins inside your existing cylinders so every old key stops working. It costs a fraction of new hardware, keeps the finish you already have, and takes under an hour for a typical Whitby home. Ask for keyed alike so one key runs the front, back, side and garage doors.

2. Fix The Strike Plates

The single best value in home security, and almost nobody does it.

A standard strike plate is held by two short screws that reach only the jamb trim — a thin strip of wood nailed to the frame. One solid kick splits that trim and takes the strike with it, while your perfectly good deadbolt stays locked in a piece of broken timber.

A box strike with three-inch screws reaching into the structural stud, plus long screws in the top hinge, turns one quiet kick into a sustained noisy effort. Twenty minutes, and it does more than any lock upgrade at the same price.

3. Deal With The Garage

Two separate jobs and both get skipped.

The side entry door into the garage is usually the cheapest lock on the property, and it opens into an unobserved space. Treat it exactly like a front door.

The door from the garage into the house is very often a hollow interior door with a privacy handle. Once somebody is in the garage they are working on it completely out of sight of the street. It should be a solid door with a real deadbolt.

Then reset the opener. Old remotes and keypad codes travel with previous owners. Both can be cleared from the opener unit itself in a few minutes.

4. Change Every Smart Lock And Keypad Code

Including the installer or builder code, which is very often still the factory default. And make sure you hold the administrator account, not a previous owner and not the installer — if you cannot personally add and remove users, you do not control your own door.

5. Test Every Window Lock

Especially basement and ground-floor rear windows. On older homes downtown and around Port Whitby a fair proportion are painted permanently open, broken, or missing entirely. It costs nothing to walk round and try them, and an unlocked window defeats every lock you just paid for.

6. Find The Patio Door Pin

Most sliding doors have a secondary pin or bar option that almost no owner has ever used. A sliding door that can be lifted in its track is a five-second entry; one with a pin through the frame is not.

While you are there, check whether the door has to be lifted to move. If it does, the rollers and track need attention — and it is one storm from jumping the track entirely.

7. Walk The Property After Dark

This costs nothing and it is the most revealing thing on the list. Stand at the street and look at your house at ten at night. Which doors are invisible? Where would you approach from? Which shrubs give complete cover to somebody standing at your front door?

Lighting at side and rear entries and trimming back two bushes usually does more than several hundred dollars of hardware.

8. Write Down What You Have

Which doors were rekeyed, how many keys were cut, who has one, what the smart lock codes are and who holds the admin. It sounds bureaucratic for a house, and in two years when you are trying to remember whether the shed was included, you will be glad it exists.

The Order That Matters

If you only do two things this week: rekey the exterior doors, and fix the strike plates. Those two cover the overwhelming majority of realistic risk for very little money.

Everything else on this list is worth doing and none of it is urgent by comparison. See our new-home rekey service, or call 647-330-7919 and we will do the lot in one visit.

Somebody has told you to change your locks. Maybe you just bought a house, maybe a relationship ended, maybe a keyring went missing. The advice you will get almost everywhere is “replace the locks” — and in the large majority of cases that advice is wrong and expensive.

There are two completely different jobs hiding behind the phrase “change the locks”, and knowing which one you need takes about a minute.

What Rekeying Actually Does

Inside a normal pin tumbler cylinder is a row of spring-loaded pin stacks. The correct key lifts every stack to exactly the right height, which lines up the shear line and lets the plug turn. Rekeying swaps those pins for a different combination of heights.

The result: a different key now turns your lock, and every key cut to the old combination stops working. Permanently. Whether you know those keys exist or not.

Nothing comes off the door. Your hardware, your finish, the fit in the frame — all unchanged. It is a change to the inside of a lock you already own.

When Rekeying Is The Right Answer

Rekey when the hardware works fine and the only problem is who has a key:

• You just bought the house and have no idea how many keys exist.
• A relationship ended and somebody still has one.
• A keyring was lost, especially with anything identifying attached.
• A renovation finished and contractors had access for months.
• A tenant moved out and the keys were not all returned.
• You have four different keys for four doors and want one.

In every one of those, the hardware is not the issue. Replacing it achieves exactly the same outcome as rekeying, for several times the cost.

When You Genuinely Should Replace

We would rather say this plainly than have you discover it later. Rekeying is wrong when the mechanism itself is failing or unsuitable:

• The key already needs jiggling. Fresh pins in a worn cylinder buys you months, not years.
• The latch does not retract fully every time. That is wear in the lock body, not the pinning.
• The finish has corroded through, or the plug wobbles.
• It is a knobset with no deadbolt beside it. Rekeying preserves a weakness rather than fixing it.
• You want a real security upgrade, a higher grade, or a smart lock.
• The cylinders are mismatched brands and cannot be pinned alike.

The Question Nobody Asks: Keyed Alike

Whichever route you take, ask for every exterior cylinder to be pinned to the same combination. One key for the front, the back, the side entry and the garage.

It costs nothing extra during a rekey and it is a change you notice every single day. Most homes accumulate keys the way they accumulate remote controls, and there is usually one on the ring nobody can identify any more.

The Doors People Forget

Homeowners rekey the front door and stop. The front door is almost never the way in.

The garage side entry is usually the cheapest lock on the property and it opens into an unobserved space. Once someone is in the garage, they are working on the door into the house out of sight of the street — and that door is very often a hollow interior door with a privacy handle on it.

Then there is the basement walk-out, the porch door, the shed with the tools in it, and the mailbox. On a rekey visit these cost very little extra because we are already there, and they are where the actual weakness sits.

And The Thing That Matters More Than Either

Whichever you choose, spend twenty dollars and twenty minutes on the frame. A standard strike plate is held by two short screws reaching only the jamb trim — a thin strip of wood nailed to the frame. One solid kick splits that trim and takes the strike with it, while your perfectly good deadbolt stays locked in a piece of broken timber.

A box strike with three-inch screws into the structural stud, plus long screws in the top hinge, changes a break-in from one quiet kick into a sustained noisy effort. It does more for a Whitby front door than any lock upgrade at the same price.

The One-Minute Version

Hardware fine, wrong people have keys? Rekey. Hardware worn, damaged or too weak? Replace. Either way, fix the strike plate and ask for keyed alike.

If somebody recommends replacement when nothing is wrong with your hardware, ask them why. There is a reasonable chance the answer is that replacement carries a parts margin and rekeying does not. See our new-home rekey service, or call 647-330-7919.