Many unauthorised home and business entries happen via the most obvious but most ignored way. Someone with a key who shouldn’t have one. Who might this be?
- A former tenant or flatmate.
- A builder, tradesman, tradesman’s assistant, labourer etc. who had keys to premises prior to the completion of a building.
- A former employee.
- An ex-girlfriend, boyfriend, husband or wife.
If any of these events have happened in your life, it’s time to resecure your premises. There doesn’t need to be a threat or perceived danger from the persons who still have access to your premises, its all about reducing risk, and ensuring your insurance is valid at the same time.
So what locks to rekey?
All External Locks
These are the most important locks, the ones the prevent entry into your property. First of all, we need to do an assessment of the locks themselves. Are they quality? Are they easy to pick/break? Do you have double sided deadlocks, or just regular locks or single sided deadlocks? If your locks are not of a high enough standard, we will generally recommend complete replacements rather than rekeying or barrel replacements.
If some or all of your locks are deemed sufficient quality by one of our team members, we can save you quite a bit of cash by simply removing the lock barrels. This is a great time to turn your house into a single key house, replacing all barrels with the same barrel. No more carrying around a pocket full of keys.
What about window locks?
Whilst replacing windows locks is a good idea – it’s not mission critical. Window locks are generally only unlockable from the inside. Your burglar is unlikely to be looking for a window to unlock from the inside, once they are already inside.
Internal Doors?
Again, not mission critical. Once an intruder is inside your house, they need not be too concerned about prying eyes or noise, and any locked doors they wish to enter will be forced open anyway.
Safes?
This is a must. Safe combinations MUST be changed or lock replaced. Even if a former tenant or staff member no longer has keys to your premises, they can find a way back in they can empty your safety of your jewelry, your business takings(Easter Monday being the most popular day for in-house safe robberies, as it’s the day the safe is usually the fullest).
Combinations for home or business Access
Leaving a combination unchanged is like leaving keys lying around. With any change of staff or residents of your home who have access via a pin entered into a security panel, the codes should be reset. Don’t use dates or names known to the former persons with pin code access as this might allow them to guess the new codes.