Apartment Living: Finding the Right Place to Call Home

Did you know that businesses are four times more likely to be victims of burglary than residential homes, and small businesses are most likely to be the victim of over half of commercial burglaries? If your business was the victim of a burglary, the first thing that you may want to do is change your locks, since entry by duplicate key is generally the most common method of burglarizing a property. Instead of splurging on getting a new lock, consider the option of rekeying. It is a simple and quick method that offers the same amount of protection that is unknown to 92% of all Americans. In short, if you are paying for a new lock instead of rekeying, you are overpaying.

The Fundamentals of Rekeying

Commercial locksmiths can rekey your locks using the existing hardware. This process involves changing the inner mechanisms and coding of the existing lock so that it can only be opened with a new key. To rekey a lock, it must first be removed from the doorframe and taken apart. The cylinder plug will be removed, and the old pins that are within are replaced with new ones before all of the components and parts are put together again and installed back onto the door.

The process basically involves changing the tumblers of a lock cylinder with different tumblers. The tumblers are responsible for the grooves on the key, as the grooves of the key must match with the one on the tumbler for it to successfully unlock the pins and open the lock. Some commercial locksmiths offer rekeying kits that you can purchase and do the job yourself, but rekeying is not as easy as it looks and sounds. If you have no experience in the field, leave it to the experts.

The Benefits of Rekeying

As mentioned above, most Americans are simply unfamiliar with how locks work. As a result, they are unaware of the ability to rekey a lock instead of having to replace it entirely. Rekeying an existing lock will basically provide you with a new one, so it is essentially the same as installing a new lock in a way. Some of the benefits of rekeying include:

• cost efficiency. Owning a business is already difficult enough. Don't spend money where it is unnecessary. Rekeying a lock will help you save a lot of money. While rates may vary, most locksmiths will only charge you anywhere from $5 to $25 to rekey each lock cylinder on top of their minimum fee; however, these rates will increase to $20 to $30 per lock if you want to install a new lock. Depending on how many locks need rekeying, you can save a lot of money.
• maintained performance. If your existing lock has been functioning perfectly well to begin with, rekeying it will only maintain its performance. In short, the performance of a functioning lock that has been rekeyed will be equivalent to installing a new lock. 
• match all locks to one key. If the locks of your businesses require different keys, you may want to rekey your locks simply because all of the locks can be rekeyed to match a single key. This means that you can finally get rid of all of the excess keys that have been dangling on your keychain and replace it with a single one. 
• improved security. By rekeying your locks, pre-existing keys that worked on the lock will no longer work anymore. If your business has just been a victim of burglary, rekeying the lock will provide you with ample security to prevent it from happening again.

The only time that rekeying is not beneficial is when you have an extremely old lock that has been malfunctioning to begin with. Rekeying a malfunctioning or deteriorating lock will not magically improve its condition. If your lock is old and not functioning properly, the commercial locksmith may recommend that you spend the money and install a new one instead. You'll get way better performance. 

Conclusion

The moral of the story is: don't splurge on installing new locks when you can get the same level of performance by simply rekeying existing locks. By rekeying your locks, you will be able to protect your business while save money. It's a win-win situation for you. Make sure that you call in certified commercial locksmiths to ensure that the locks will function properly and are installed correctly.