Nearby city · 24/7
San Lorenzo locksmith calls on the grid north of the city, for small 1940s houses that were built alike and have been altered one at a time
The unincorporated grid between Hesperian Boulevard and the freeway: rows of small houses put up in the 1940s for shipyard workers, the Village and the shops around it, straight streets on a flat grid, garages converted into rooms, and a twenty-four-minute run north on Hesperian.
24 min
Avg. arrival
$89
Service call
24/7
Availability
San Lorenzo houses were built to one pattern and have been changed one house at a time ever since, which is exactly what the work looks like. The front door is small and often original, with a knob and a deadbolt added at some point in the last fifty years. The back door goes to a yard. The garage has usually been converted into a bedroom or a rented room, and that conversion door is the one that never quite latches. Rekeying is $24 to $39 per cylinder and the count is four or five on most lots. A lockout is $115 to $199, picked open, and on these small houses the answer is often the back door rather than the front, which is said before the technician walks around.
A good many of these houses are rented, sometimes by the family that grew up in them and moved on, and the working pattern is the same as inside the city. A rekey between tenants is booked by the owner or by the manager acting for them. A tenant locked out at night calls the lockout themselves, shows an ID and the lease, and the door is opened without damage. Neither is treated as the lesser call. Where an owner has a couple of houses on the same street, they go into one visit and the $89 service call is inside the figure once rather than three times.
The Village and the shops along Hesperian bring commercial work: glass doors in aluminum frames, a deadlatch that has drifted, a back door onto a service lane. Storefront work is $145 to $429 and a business lockout at opening is $125 to $229. Cars in the shopping lots and along the side streets bring lockouts at $95 to $185 and a replacement key at $139 to $379 for a car with no key at all. San Lorenzo is unincorporated and its addresses read differently to the city's, but nothing about the figure changes for it. Arrival is about twenty-four minutes, and $45 is inside the figure between 8pm and midnight, $80 after.
Say whether the address is in the Village or on the streets toward the freeway, and give a cross street, because the blocks here repeat. If the trouble is a converted garage or a back room that is rented separately, say so, since that decides which door and who books the work.
FAQ
Asked before the phone comes out
How long before the van is on my street?+
Twenty-four minutes is the average across Hayward, because the van works out of Jackson Street instead of being sent over from another city. Downtown and B Street run about 16 minutes, Jackson Triangle and Burbank 18, Prospect Hill and the Cherryland and Ashland strip 21, San Leandro 22, San Lorenzo 24, Mt. Eden and Tennyson and Southgate 26, Eden Shores 28, Hayward Highlands and Fairway Park 31, and Castro Valley and Union City around 28 to 31. The hill above the campus and Castro Valley are the slowest runs on this map, and that is said on the call rather than left to you watching the street. The window you get by text is drawn from wherever the van sits when you ring, not from that average.
Does the lock have to be destroyed to get the door open?+
Almost never, and never without you saying so first. Picks, decoders and bypass tools handle apartment cylinders on Tennyson Road, builder deadbolts on the Burbank tracts, the mortise sets on the slope above downtown, aluminum shopfronts, most car doors and most safes, and the lock is left doing its job afterward. The exception is a cylinder that is high-security, already smashed, or welded shut around a snapped blade. When that is what the door is, you hear it plainly, you hear what would go back in, and the choice is yours. The number does not move either way.
What is inside the number I hear on the phone, and what could add to it?+
The $89 service call, the labor, whatever part goes on the door, and the night hour if there is one, rolled into a single number. Stairs, a gated lot, a buzzer lobby, a unit at the back of a complex, a long strip driveway on a San Leandro avenue: none of that moves it. The one thing that can add is work you decide on once the technician is there, such as putting new pins in the back door while the front one is standing open. That gets a number of its own out loud, and it starts when you say so and not before.
Is it more at night, on a weekend or on a holiday?+
Saturday, Sunday and holidays cost the same as a Tuesday afternoon. The clock is the only thing that changes it: $45 goes on between 8pm and midnight, $80 between midnight and 7am. Both are folded into the number you hear, so nothing surfaces later. A house lockout that is $115 in daylight is quoted as $160 at eleven at night and $195 at four in the morning, and the receipt matches what you agreed to.
I rent. Can I get my own door opened without calling the landlord first?+
Yes. About half of this city rents, and a tenant is the customer, not a complication. For a lockout, bring photo ID that shows the address, or ID plus something on your phone that ties you to the unit: a lease page, a utility bill, a rent receipt, addressed mail. Give the building and the unit number on the call so the van is not circling the block looking for a door. Nobody is telephoned about you, and no permission from an owner is needed to put you back inside the place you pay for.
I own units and need them rekeyed between tenants. How does that work?+
Rekeying is counted per cylinder, so a fourplex with front and back doors is eight cylinders and comes back as one number. Each unit can sit on its own key with a single management key above the set, so what you carry is one key rather than a ring. Old keys come back to you in labeled bags to check against whatever a tenant handed over. The receipt lists every door by unit. A manager acting for an owner who lives elsewhere can approve the work with a management agreement or a text from the owner, and the receipt can be addressed to either of you or both.
Our building has a buzzer panel and a lobby door. Is that something you handle?+
Yes, and on the apartment blocks along Tennyson Road and Mission Boulevard it is a large share of the week. A door that releases when the buzzer sounds and then never catches again is usually an electric strike drifting out of line or a deadlatch that has stopped grabbing, not a dead panel. Entry panels, strikes, closers, mailbox banks and shared laundry doors are all carried on the van. Anything larger than a single door gets counted in person before a number is put on it.
Our house in Burbank still has the hardware the builder put on in the fifties. Does all of it have to come off?+
Usually not. The flat streets in Burbank, Glen Eden and Mt. Eden are full of original knob sets and slim deadbolts that turn perfectly well and only need repinning so keys from four owners ago stop working. Three things are worth changing: a cylinder with real wear in it, a deadbolt whose throw no longer reaches the frame, and a strike screwed into trim instead of the stud behind it, which is the single detail that decides whether a door survives a kick. Which of the three applies to your door is said before anything is unscrewed.
Do you come to Southland, the BART lots and the college parking?+
Yes, and a good share of the car work happens in exactly those places: Southland Mall, the Hayward and South Hayward BART parking, the Chabot College and Cal State East Bay lots, the Executive Airport, a carport behind an apartment block, a driveway on a Burbank street. Name the lot and give a landmark, a row or the color of the car, because Southland on a Saturday is a great deal of parking. A gated garage needs someone able to let the van through the gate. None of it changes the number.
24/7 — nights, weekends & holidays
The van is already in town, and the number comes before it moves
Hayward, San Lorenzo, Cherryland and Ashland, San Leandro, Castro Valley and Union City, 24/7, holidays included. Describe the door, hear one number with the $89 visit inside it, and the lock gets opened without damage wherever it can be. The receipt says what the call said. It runs the same way whether the lease is in your name or the deed is.