Master Key Systems in San Mateo
A single key for the whole building over a set of restricted ones below it, priced per building on paper.
custom quote
Typical price
23 min
Avg. arrival
24/7
Availability
A master key system lets a manager carry one key for every door while each tenant, nurse or shift lead carries a key that opens only what is theirs. San Mateo runs a great many of them: a medical building near Mills-Peninsula with six practices and a shared records room, an apartment block in North Central with a laundry and a bike cage, a townhome HOA at Bay Meadows with a pool gate and a mail room, a restaurant on 4th Ave with an office, a walk-in and a bar. Hillsdale Lock & Key designs the system, pins it, and hands over the paperwork that lets you run it yourself.
The system is drawn before it is pinned. From a floor plan or a walk of the building, and a frank talk about who needs which door, the technician lays out the levels: a grand master where a portfolio needs one, a master for each building or floor, sub-masters for a department or a wing, a change key at each door. A restricted keyway sits under all of it, so a key cannot be copied at a kiosk, which is how one key becomes three without anyone noticing. Each cylinder is pinned in the van with master pins over the change pins, each key is stamped with its level and logged by number, and the chart comes to you showing which key opens which door, with spare rows for the doors you add next year.
Master key work is quoted per project, because door count, keyway and restricted-key options set the number, and a single published figure would be a guess. The written quote lists cylinders by door, keys by level and design time once. The $89 service call covers the survey and is counted toward the job. Once you approve the quote it does not move. Repinning one door later stays inside the system at $24 to $40 per cylinder.
Describe the building: door count and what kind of place it is. It is written down: the chart and the itemized quote come in writing after the survey, and installation is booked once you approve. The van pulls out: on the booked day, with the name and the window by text. Fit: each cylinder pinned and tested in its own door, keys handed over logged and signed for. The receipt matches, cylinder by cylinder.
“Our 1928 Spanish-revival house has the original mortise lock and the front door swung shut with my keys on the hall table. $138 written down on the call. The text with the technician's name came before I had finished walking to the neighbor's porch, and the van was outside in twenty-three minutes. He picked the mortise cylinder without a mark on the brass and the card was charged $138.”
Every job is priced from the list below. The figure is written down on the call, before the van pulls out, and the receipt matches it line for line.
- Daytime (7am–8pm)standard rates
- Evening (8pm–12am)+$45
- Overnight (12am–7am)+$75
FAQ
Master Key Systems: quick answers
A medical building with six practices, a shared records room and a janitor. How is it laid out?+
Three levels. Each practice holds a change key for its own suite. The records room sits on a sub-master held by the office managers. The building master goes to the property manager, and the janitor carries a key cut to open only the corridors and the utility rooms. When a receptionist leaves, one suite is repinned and the rest of the building is untouched.
Do our existing cylinders have to go?+
Not always. Commercial cylinders from the main makers accept master pinning. A cylinder in a keyway that cannot join the system, or one so worn that an extra pin stack would jam, is swapped and appears as its own line in the quote, so the count is visible before any work begins.
What if the master key itself goes missing?+
Only the doors under that master are repinned; the rest of the system stands. That is why the levels are drawn narrowly in the first place. And because the keyway is restricted, the missing key is very unlikely to have been copied before it went missing.
Related
More commercial services
24/7 — nights, weekends & holidays
One call, one figure on the work order, the same figure on the receipt
Calls answered 24/7 across San Mateo and the towns beside it. The $89 service call, the labor and the parts are inside the number written down on the call, and the receipt matches it line for line.