A safe visit here turns on two questions, and neither of them is how far the van has to come. What lock is on the front of it, and what is the safe standing on: a strata's slab, a wood subfloor with a neighbour under it, or a garage pad. Answer those two on the call and the price band comes back with the answer.
Scheduled work on suite safes, house installs and business units across the city, quoted from the lock rather than the postcode.
Three kinds of building account for most of the safe work in Richmond, and each one changes the job before the lock is even looked at. In the Brighouse and City Centre towers the safe is in a suite closet, standing on a floor that is not the suite owner's to drill, and who has to approve that depends on the building: the strata high-rises along Alderbridge Way and Cook Road date from the mid-1990s onward and answer to a council, while the north end of Brighouse still holds rental apartment blocks from the 1970s and 1980s, where the permission comes from whoever owns the building. On the west side, through Broadmoor, Thompson, Seafair and Terra Nova, it is in a detached house with an attached garage, which is the difference between drilling into a slab and drilling into somebody's ceiling. On the commercial side it is behind a sales floor or in a back office, and the problem is usually a code rather than a lock. The mechanisms themselves are the same everywhere: mechanical dials, electronic keypads, biometric units and key-locking boxes, in floor and wall safes, gun safes, jewellery safes, fire cabinets, drop safes and commercial vault doors.
These are the bands ordinary jobs land in rather than quotes, and none of them is priced by neighbourhood. A keypad box in a tower suite and the same box in a workshop out back are the same piece of work and carry the same band. What moves the figure is the lock: what type it is, what condition it is in, and whether it can be persuaded rather than cut. Call with the make, whatever is still legible on the plate, and a description of what happens when you work the dial or the pad, and the band narrows before a technician sets off.
| Service | Typical range |
|---|---|
| Safe opening (electronic keypad) | $125 – $250 |
| Safe opening (mechanical dial) | $150 – $350 |
| Safe opening (biometric or high-security) | $200 – $500+ |
| Combination change (dial) | $80 – $160 |
| Combination change (electronic) | $75 – $140 |
| Safe installation (supply & bolt-down) | $90 – $200 (labour) |
| Safe repair (keypad / actuator) | $95 – $280 |
| Lost-key service (fire cabinet) | $85 – $175 |
Those figures are estimates. The number you agree to is the one confirmed at the safe, before anything is opened.
Tell us the make, whatever the plate still shows, whether the front is a dial or a pad, and what the safe is sitting on. A photograph of the front and of the plate saves a round of guesswork on the price. If you are having one installed rather than opened, the floor is the entire question, so say which room and which level of the building it is going into.
The technician works the mechanism before choosing a method, and nothing is cut while a non-destructive route is still open. If there is no such route left, you hear two numbers before anyone agrees to it: the replacement lock, and the repair to the door afterwards. Drilling a safe is not the end of the job, and pricing it as though it were is how people end up surprised.
You key in the new combination yourself and the lock is cycled to confirm the bolt throws cleanly on it. On an installation the safe is left bolted and sitting level, and you are shown which fixings are holding it, because the next person who wants to move it will need to know that.
Behind every lobby between Granville Avenue and Cook Road there are hundreds of strata-titled suites, and a large share of them are rented rather than lived in by the owner. Tenancies turn over faster than combinations get written down. The ordinary version of this call is a resident who did not set the code and was never given it. Opening the safe is the straightforward half. The half worth settling first is authorisation, because the safe belongs to whoever owns the suite, so on a rented unit it is the owner or the property manager who books the work rather than the person standing beside it. Where a rekey is already booked on that suite, the combination reset goes on the same attendance.
Installing a safe in one of those suites is not a lock question at all. It is a floor question, and the floor is not yours. The slab under a tower closet is part of the building's structure, and the other side of it is somebody's ceiling. That makes anchoring a matter for the strata council, and it is worth raising before the visit is booked rather than while a technician is standing in the closet with a drill. Ask about something specific: this safe, this weight, this closet, anchored this way. Call us first and we will describe what the anchoring would actually involve, so the request in front of the council is a real proposal instead of a general enquiry. Where drilling the slab is never going to be approved, the honest alternative is a heavier safe that holds its place by weight, not a light one bolted to nothing.
The west side is settled detached stock: Broadmoor built from the 1960s through the 1990s, Seafair from the late 1960s into the 1980s, Thompson almost entirely single-family with very few strata addresses in it, Terra Nova newer and larger up at the northwest tip. Nearly all of it has an attached garage and a secondary door at the side or the back, and that is what decides where a safe ends up. A garage bay is a slab at ground level and takes the better anchor by some distance. A main-floor closet is a wood subfloor, which will hold a safe, but wants the fixings placed with some attention to what is underneath them. Which room it goes in is worth settling before the visit rather than after, because moving an anchored safe later is a second job and a second set of holes.
There is a second problem with the garage that is worth raising before the drill comes out, because it is common in these houses. The garage pedestrian door and the side entry are often on a different key from the front door, usually because one of them was replaced at some point and never matched back to the others. A safe standing behind a lock whose key history nobody can account for is not as private as the safe's own rating suggests. If the keys on your ring do not match each other, mention it when you book the safe and both pieces of work happen in one visit.
Hamilton and Gilmore each change that answer. The townhomes north of Westminster Highway are wood frame throughout, so an anchor there is a subfloor decision wherever in the unit the safe ends up. In Gilmore the safe is often not in the house at all but out in a workshop, a shed or an equipment building, and a separate structure is a separate anchoring question with its own line on the quote.
Retail units in the No. 3 Road malls change tenants often, and a safe in a storage room is one of the few things in a unit that tends to stay where it is through a changeover. A combination does not transfer the way a key does. There is nothing to count back and nothing to photograph for an inventory, so an incoming tenant regularly opens up with a safe in the back that nobody present can use. Opening it and resetting it is one visit, and it is better done in the first week than discovered on the night a deposit needs to go in.
The neighbourhood plazas produce a different mix. Ironwood Plaza at No. 5 Road and Steveston Highway, along with Seafair Shopping Centre at No. 1 Road and Granville Avenue, both carry medical offices beside the grocery and service retail, and the safes behind those doors tend to be fire-rated document cabinets rather than cash boxes. Those come to us for a lost key or for a combination that left with whoever set it. If the lock itself has given out rather than the memory of the code, the cost of a new one is put to you as its own figure and fitted the same day when it is a model we carry.
Most of the time, and it is the first thing attempted on every visit: manipulation on a dial, the exterior battery contacts and the emergency keyway on a keypad. Drilling is what remains when a mechanism is genuinely seized or already failed. It carries two costs people do not expect, and both are put to you before the decision is made: the lock has to be replaced afterwards, and the hole through the door has to be made good.
Anything that involves drilling into the slab of a suite is a question for the strata council rather than for us, so ask before the visit is booked. It is easier to get an answer on a specific proposal than a general one, so call us first with the safe and the location in mind. We will tell you what the anchoring would involve and you can take that to the council.
Common in the towers around Brighouse and City Centre, and straightforward to resolve. We open it and you set a new code yourself. The one thing to sort out beforehand is who authorises the work: the safe belongs to the owner of the suite, so on a rental the owner or the property manager confirms the job rather than the tenant standing next to it.
That depends on the lock and not on the address. An electronic box whose cells have gone flat is usually short work. A mechanical dial that nobody has turned for years is not, and it does not get quicker for being hurried. Safe work is normally booked rather than run as a lockout, so what you get is an arrival window and a technician who has time to do it properly.
Yes. We can advise on fire rating, burglary classification and the size that actually suits the space, which in a compact suite is a real constraint rather than an afterthought. Not every model is on the van every day, so call ahead with what you are looking for and we will confirm what can come out with the technician.
Often the better way to book it, yes. A safe standing in a garage is only as private as whatever opens the garage, so on a west-side house it belongs in the same conversation as the keys. In a tower suite being rekeyed between tenancies, a combination reset is a small addition once a technician is already inside the unit. Say so at booking and the slot is made long enough for both.
Every neighbourhood in the city, booked on one number, and the same pricing whichever side of No. 3 Road you are on.
Every job handled by a licensed Richmond technician, with no subcontractor sent in our place.