Master Key Systems in Hayward

One key in the manager's pocket opens every door in the building; the key in each tenant's pocket opens one unit and the laundry. That is a master key system, and small Hayward buildings are exactly the size where it pays. A fourplex on Tennyson with a shared laundry room and a gate. A twelve-unit block on Mission Boulevard with a buzzer door, a trash enclosure and a storage room. A manager holding keys for sixty units across the city for an owner who lives somewhere else. A shop on B Street with an office, a stockroom and a back door. A warehouse near the shoreline with a yard gate, a man door and a mezzanine office. Eden Locksmith designs the system, pins every cylinder, and hands over a chart you can run for years without another visit.

The drawing is the real work; the pinning is an afternoon. After a walk of the building and a plain conversation about who needs which door, the levels get sketched: a master for the building, sub-masters where a manager, a maintenance hand and a gardener each need a different reach, and a change key for every unit door. Underneath it all goes a restricted keyway, so a tenant cannot have a copy cut at a kiosk and hand it to somebody who is not on the lease. Cylinders are pinned at the van with the master pins stacked above the change pins, then carried back and tried in their own doors, twice. Original mortise cylinders on older buildings are pinned into the system and kept rather than replaced. Every key is stamped with its level and logged by number, and the chart lists each door against each key that opens it, with empty rows for the doors you add next year.

There is no published figure for a master key system, because door count, keyway and the choice of restricted key move it further than anything else. What you get instead is an itemized quote after the survey: cylinders by door, keys by level, and the design once. The $89 service call is the survey and it counts toward the job. Once you approve the quote, it holds. A single door repinned later, when one tenant leaves, is $24 to $39 and the rest of the system does not change.

You call and say what happened or what you are planning: how many doors, how many units, what kind of building. The survey is booked, and the figure comes after it as a chart and an itemized quote. The van leaves Jackson Street on the installation day, and a text names the technician and gives a thirty-minute window. Each cylinder goes back into its own door and is tried there with its change key and with the master, keys are handed over against the log and signed for, and the receipt shows the figure from the call, door by door and unit by unit.