Garage lock work in Richmond happens away from the No. 3 Road tower corridor, out on the detached streets through Broadmoor, Seafair, Thompson, Hamilton and Steveston, because the high-rise half of the city parks in a building rather than a garage. Out there, garage door locks get fitted and rekeyed where they stand: a T-handle on a hand-lifted overhead door, a deadbolt on the walk-in side door, and a cylinder in the door through to the house, all brought onto the key that already opens your front door.
A Richmond garage carries as many as three cylinders. One sits on the overhead door, one on the walk-in side door beside it, and one on the door through to the house. On the detached stock in Broadmoor, Seafair and Thompson they almost never share a key, because the front deadbolt has been replaced a hardware generation or two ahead of everything else on the property.
Which half of Richmond you live in decides whether there is a job here at all. In a City Centre or Brighouse tower, or one of the Hollybridge Way buildings in West Cambie, the parkade door and the fob reader are common-area access control: those go through the property manager, and we work from the suite door inward. In the townhome complexes off No. 1 Road in Steveston, and in the strata townhomes on the grid north of Westminster Highway in Hamilton, the shared exterior gate is keyed rather than fobbed, and that gate cylinder is the strata's rather than any one owner's. On a house, every cylinder on the property is yours, which is where this page starts.
The van carries Schlage B-series, Weiser and Kwikset hardware in the keyways Richmond houses actually run, along with T-handles, slide bolts, keypad deadbolts and a key machine, so the lock goes on and the blanks are cut at the same stop. Say what the door is and what name is stamped on the lock it already has, and the right parts ride out on the first visit instead of the second.
| What we fit | Range |
|---|---|
| Slide bolt or cane bolt on the overhead door | $40–$90 |
| Rekeying a garage cylinder onto the house key you carry | $30–$80 |
| Keyed T-handle, supplied and fitted | $60–$140 |
| Deadbolt on the garage walk-in door | $90–$180 |
| Deadbolt on the door through to the house | $90–$170 |
| Smart lock fitted to the garage walk-in door | $180–$400 |
Every band here covers the hardware, the fitting and the visit. What pushes a job to the top of its band is a solid-core or metal-clad side door, a strike mortise that has to be cut deeper before the bolt will seat, or a cylinder in a keyway the van does not stock. Read the brand off the lock face while you are booking and the number can be narrowed before anyone is dispatched. Several cylinders handled on one visit also work out cheaper per lock than booking them one at a time.
There are three candidates: the overhead door itself, the walk-in side door beside it, and the door through to the house. For the overhead one we need to know whether you lift it yourself or a motor drives it, since only the first of those takes a lock at all. Whatever name is printed on the existing lock matters too. Schlage, Weiser, Kwikset or something older decides whether the key you already carry can pick up the garage.
A street address is usually all this job needs, since the hardware and the cutter both come to the door. One thing is worth saying on the call: Terra Nova is reached entirely through its own residential streets, since the rural park sits between the houses and the dyke, not across the road in.
Hardware goes on, blanks come off the cutter in the van, and if you want the property running on one key the new cylinder gets pinned to match it. Then it is tested with the door shut rather than open, because a bolt that throws its full travel in the air and jams in the strike is the call-back this job generates.
The most common garage request in Richmond does not begin at the garage. Take a Broadmoor house. There is a deadbolt at the front, Schlage or Weiser, and then a second keyed thing further round the property: a lever or knob on the garage's inside door, a side entry, a gate into the garden. What gets asked for is rarely a new lock. It is all of them answering to one key, which is one of the most frequent requests we get from Broadmoor owners. Thompson is almost entirely detached single family, generous lots and two-car garages with very few stratas anywhere in the grid, so whoever rings is the owner, not a tenant and not a property manager, and the decision gets made at the door instead of going to a council.
Seafair is where that job turns awkward. It was built out from the late 1960s through the 1980s: full-size lots, attached garages, a side or rear way in as well as the front one. On plenty of those houses the entry deadbolt has been changed once or twice over the years while the garage door is still wearing the knob set it came with. Two or three hardware generations under one roof means mismatched keyways, and a Schlage entry will not carry a Kwikset garage bolt on its key. One end has to move, which is a cylinder swap rather than a rekey, and the replacement rides in the van so it happens on the same visit.
Go a few streets over in Broadmoor, toward Gilbert Road and toward Railway Avenue, and the same problem turns up a decade earlier. Side doors there still carry 1960s and early-1970s Weiser and Dominion product that predates current keyway standards. Whether one of those can join the key you already carry comes down to its condition rather than its age: pins and springs still in good order will usually take a rekey, while a cylinder that has gone worn or corroded is better replaced than pinned again. Hamilton's bigger lots toward Francis Road and the dyke land at the same answer from the other direction. The garage takes up the front of the house and the way in on foot is a separate door at the side or the back. Some of those side and rear doors picked up a deadbolt years after the build, bought and fitted by an owner rather than the builder, and that is where the keyway stops matching the front.
Gilmore sits at the southwest edge, out where No. 4 Road runs south and Steveston Highway runs west into Agricultural Land Reserve country and the lots get large. The garage question changes shape there. On one of those properties the detached garage is often closed by a padlock on a hasp instead of a cylinder in the door, and the outbuildings behind it are often the same, though some still run a keyed cylinder. That makes a Gilmore rekey a property job rather than a door job. The technician walks the lot on arrival and counts every cylinder and hasp before quoting, priced on how many there are rather than on how much land they sit on, which matters most when the place is changing hands. A padlock that has seized is opened and replaced in the same visit with a hardened body meant to live outdoors.
In a couple of pockets of the city a garage side door will not simply accept a new deadbolt. Around the Steveston village core, pre-1960s exterior doors still run mortise locks, which is a different mechanism from the bored deadbolt every modern door is drilled for. The Burkeville bungalows on Sea Island, a residential enclave built between 1948 and the early 1950s, are the other pocket: the front of one of those houses has often been modernised while a mortise or rim latch soldiers on at the secondary entries. Neither case is a rekey and neither is an off-the-shelf swap, so the hardware has to be pinned down before the visit rather than in the driveway. Describe what you are looking at and the matching cylinder comes out with the technician.
A fair share of garage calls turn out not to be lock calls. Richmond's older wood-frame stock moves. Frames on the 1960s and 1970s houses in Thompson and Seafair have settled over decades, and the wood-frame doors on Hamilton's townhomes swell with the season. The test is quick. If the bolt throws its full travel with the door open and jams once the door is shut, nothing is wrong with the lock: the strike has moved relative to the bolt, and repositioning the strike plate, deepening its mortise or taking a light plane off the door edge puts it right and the lock is never touched. The other half of the diagnosis runs the opposite way: if the plug drags as it turns, or the key has gone sticky since the cylinder was last rekeyed, the door is fine and the cylinder has run out of service life. That one gets replaced rather than pinned again. A frame that has gone out of square is door repair rather than lock work.
There is a line down the middle of a garage door and it is worth knowing which side your problem sits on. Cylinders, keys, keying, T-handles, deadbolts and the keyed pedestrian door are locksmith work, and that is the whole of this page. An opener motor that has quit, with the remote sitting on the bench inside, is not. That belongs to the door trade rather than to this one, and no amount of key cutting lifts the panel. Springs, cables, rollers, tracks and panels go the same way. Each has a page of its own here: garage door repair for the door, and garage door opener repair for the motor that drives it. Describe what the door is actually doing when you ring and we will tell you which trade you want, including when the answer is not us.
Pick the area you are in. Each one has its own page covering the lock hardware that turns up there and how the van gets to you.
Garage locks are one piece of a property. A detached garage often runs on a different key from the house, which is why a garage rekey and a house rekey are so often asked for together.