I just bought a couple of apartment buildings. There are a couple of doors I need to open this weekend, but the locksmith is alas not available til next week. The doors are secured by a couple of ordinary Kwikset residential deadbolt locks, which I consider disposable.
I'm thinking of just taking a power drill and drilling out the plug from each lock, to then stick in a screwdriver and turn or prod the innards to open the doors. Is this practical, or will the lock just freeze into a mangled mess and never open again?
Do you really want us instructing people on how to break into your tenants' apartments? Or your house, for that matter?
The simple answer is: It's theoretically possible to open a lock destructively if you know what you're doing, but if you knew what you were doing you wouldn't be asking us. I think it's more probable that you're going to make a mess which will cost you more time AND money to undo.
Anything short of a fire or flood in progress can wait until Monday, and if that's what you were dealing with you wouldn't be taking the time to ask us. Or find another locksmith and offer to pay overtime.
Don't knoqw where you are located but in most places you are not allowed to enter a tenants premises without permision unles it's an emergrency or at least giving 24 hours notice (and then you'd better have a pretty good reason).
What you are talking about doing (unless the unit is vacant) is breaking and entering. Additionally.... anything that the tenant ***says*** is missing afterwards, you AND the locksmith can be held liable for. Even if the whole thing gets tossed out of court, it can cost you a couple of thousand dollars to pay a lawyer to make it "go away".
This happened to a (locksmith) friend of mine years ago. taugt me a lesson!.
My advice... get permission first.
Now if the units are vacamt, that's another story. But like Joe said, it's not information that will be given out here by and responsibly thinking party.
And to answer your question, unless you know where ***and just how far*** to drill, all you'll do is make a mess of things.
The doors in question are not apartments. One room is our future office. We NEED to set up the office ASAP so we can start shooting faxes back & forth - to evict some people. The other room is a basement. Right now, it is locked to me and open to the former maintenance man - who is apparently a meth head. Time is of the essence!
It may be a moot point, because apparently I just learned to pick locks. I had bought a set of picks on the Internet some months ago, but was not able to make any progress. Last week, I paid a locksmith to pick about 8 locks at the bulding, and watched him carefully while he did it.
Using the same exaggerated waggle that he did, I just picked a couple of Schlage locks. Cool! I think Kwikset might be even easier because the clearances are larger and there are less codes per pin.
I already do my own pinning and master keying.
The comment about not teaching tenants to break locks is very valid.
... Or do what the police would do: break down the door and repair/replace it later. For that matter, if you're concerned about the guy being an addict, GO TO THE POLICE and ask them for assistance dealing with the situation -- to protect yourself both physically and legally.
Do not have lock picks anywhere near the apartment if you are the owner or manager, always use someone else to get locks open. If you are in a legal hassle, having the other side implying you picked a lock open may be the last thing you need.
Sounds like you need to find another locksmith who can do the work sooner than the other guy.
Either that or stake out the room the former maintenance man has a key to and relieve him of it the next time he drops by the building.
You can set up your fax machine darn near anywhere, like in a vacant apartment for the time being if you need to..
There are many ways to gain access to a locked door and if the quality of the locks is representative of the quality of the doors, you can probaably just break the door down by throwing your own weight around or maybe recruiting someone who weighs a bit more than you do.
You probably will want to put sturdy doors on your office and the maintenance room anyway to safeguard your property in there.
The local Yellow Pages are your friend.
If you try drilling a lock and don't know what you are doing, eventually you will get the lock open, but you will probably run out of patience first and unless you plan to rreplace the door anyway, may damage it beyond repair.
Of course. The guy who was hard to get did a fine job when he finally showed. The guys who were easier to get did fine when they showed, too. I'm setting up commercial accounts with both.
That place is such a circus. Two air conditioners have disappeared from locked apartments. Damn things were probably worth less than $20 each. Also, my ostensibly locked basement has been "shuffled". Apparently, people have opened the two deadbolts ( installed in a mesh security door ) with coat hanger wires. So another call to the locksmith for a pair of double-cylinder deadbolts.
The other day, a tenant threatened to have my manager killed. The police have been informed. - Jerry Kaidor
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