A lockout can paralyze business activities suddenly without any notice. The employees can find themselves unable to access the premises while the clients may have to wait. In addition, the delivery will be late and appointment may require a schedule change.

Los Angeles Commercial Locksmith offers lockout service for commercial businesses such as office premises, retail stores, restaurants, warehouse, apartments, medical facilities, and other businesses. We aim at restoring access without causing any damage to your door and lock.

Reasons for a Business Lockout

There are many causes of a commercial lockout problem. The key might be lost or left in the building, misplaced at the home of an employee or even locked into the lock. The high traffic locks will face wear and tear making the cylinders, latch or panic bar to fail.

Common lockout problems include:

• Breaking of the keys

• Loss keys

• Jammed locks

• Failure of keypad locks

• Depletion of battery in electronic locks

• Misaligned doors

• Malfunctioning panic bars

• key fob failures

• Electric strikes failures

• Problems with magnetic locks

Solving the problem requires determining whether the problem is mechanical, electronic or even door related.

Non Destructive Entry Wherever Possible

When a professional locksmith is dealing with a lockout situation, he will start with the least destructive means necessary. He can manipulate the lock, extract a broken key, fix latch or strike misalignments, repair the exit devices, and fix door alignment issues depending on the type of hardware and if it fails, drilling will only be done on highly damaged and securely protected locks.

Properly utilizing the right method to unlock a lock can help you avoid additional cost and facilitate quick resumption of normal business activities. Once the lockout technician determines that new hardware is needed, he should give you the choices available before removing the existing lock.

Electronic and Keyless Door Lockouts

Various commercial buildings in Los Angeles employ keypads, card readers, electronic locks, electric strikes, magnetic locks and access control networks. In case one of these doorways is malfunctioning, then the issue may be more complicated than just the employee credentials.

There can be various causes including:

• Dead batteries

• Power loss

• Damaged wiring

• Reader failure

• Incorrect permissions

• Door misalignment

• A damaged electric strike

• Control-panel problems 

Both locks, physical and electronic, can be inspected and analyzed by a commercial locksmith to find a solution, this might entail replacement of batteries, restoration of power, alignment of hardware, resetting of codes, and repair of locking mechanism among others.

Forcing an electronically controlled door can result in destruction of expensive electronics and creation of a bigger security problem.

What Should You Do in Case Your Key Is Lost?

Opening the door is the initial step in dealing with a lockout, however a missing key may pose a security problem. Once your key is either lost or stolen, it would be a good idea to consider rekeying.

Rekeying is a process where the lock is manipulated so as to prevent the functioning of the lost key while retaining the hardware. In case you have an electronic access system, then the lost cards and key fobs should be disabled. It is also important to change the keypad codes.

How to Prevent Future Lockouts?

Once the door is unlocked and access is restored, we can conduct an inspection on the door to see how we can prevent future lockouts. We can suggest any of the following solutions such as creating duplicate keys, replacing the old keys, rekeying, fixing the latch and installing keyless entry systems among others.