Changing Locks When You Move – and why it’s important
Securing Your New Beginning
Moving into a new home is an exciting experience, filled with possibilities and the fresh promise of a new start. Amidst the bustle of packing, unpacking, and redecorating, one critical step is often overlooked: changing the locks on your new property. While it may seem like a minor detail, changing the locks & updating them is an essential measure for protecting your home, belongings, and loved ones.
Why Changing Locks Matters
When you take ownership of a new home—be it a flat, house, or even a let property—you can never be entirely certain how many sets of keys are in circulation. Previous owners, tenants, estate agents, cleaners, builders, and even neighbours might still have a copy. By changing the locks, you establish control and peace of mind, knowing exactly who has access to your property.
Protecting Your Family and Belongings
Your new home is likely filled with personal possessions, treasured items, and, most importantly, the people you care about. Failing to change the locks leaves you vulnerable to uninvited guests. Burglaries and unauthorised entries are often crimes of opportunity; ensuring your locks are unique to you greatly reduces the risk.
Meeting Insurance Requirements
Many insurance policies require evidence that the property has secure locks, and some may void claims if it’s discovered you did not change them after moving in. By updating your locks, you not only strengthen your home’s defences but also ensure you’re meeting the terms and conditions of your insurer—potentially saving you a headache should you ever need to make a claim.
Peace of Mind
There’s no substitute for the peace of mind that comes from knowing your home is secure. Sleeping soundly in your new surroundings is easier when you know you’ve taken proactive steps to protect your household. It’s a simple one-off task that can save you worry and stress down the line.
Don’t Forget Internal and Outbuildings
While the front and back doors are obvious priorities, don’t overlook other access points. Garages, sheds, garden gates, and even internal doors may also require updated locks—particularly if they provide access to valuables or private areas.
How to Change Your Locks
Contact a reputable locksmith who is approved by a recognised trade association.
Consider upgrading to more secure lock types, such as anti-snap cylinders or smart locks.
Retain control of all new keys, and only provide copies to trusted individuals.
Dispose of old keys securely to prevent them falling into the wrong hands.
Conclusion
Changing the locks is a simple, affordable step that makes a world of difference to your home security. As you settle into your new home, make lock replacement a top priority—it’s a small investment in your safety, comfort, and peace of mind. After all, your new chapter deserves to start on the right foot: safe, secure, and truly yours.
This week I have been to three properties to replace mechanisms that have cost the customers a lot of money. In all three cases, the cost could have been avoided with very easy door maintenance. Doors with multipoint locking mechanisms have various bolts, hooks and/or rollers. When they have bolts at the top and bottom going up and down, the one going down is the problem. A bolt going down means a hole in the floor for that bolt to go in to and thanks to Newton and his pesky discovery of gravity, a hole going down gets full of lots of things you don’t want, from small stones to compacted dirt over a long period of time. Taking seconds to hoover any floor holes around doors every time you vacuum your floors can potentially save you a rather large locksmith bill. If you have allowed these holes to fill, digging out any compacted grit with a screwdriver first will be a good start.
Another culprit that can cost money comes in the form of six legs. If you have wood doors with multi-point locks and no top and bottom bolts, insects have a habit of nesting behind the mechanism. Here is an image of one I removed this week.
That nest material sets rock hard and breaks the mechanism. You can usually tell if you have nesting insects by leaving the door wide open (usually outward opening doors) and watching to see if the parent swoops in or out. If they do, get someone like me to clear out the nest before it becomes a problem. If not, then regularly treat the area with (preferably Eco-friendly) repellents.
The last big problem of the summer is the heat. Plastic doors in particular (but wood doors as well), contract and warp in the heat. If your door is difficult in the morning sun, It may be OK again in the cooler evening when the sun is not shining directly on it. The parts to really watch here are hooks. If a plastic door warps, or a wooden door contracts too much, the hooks might separate too much to engage properly into the holes they go into. Trying to force them is likely to break your mechanism, When this happens you will need either a locksmith or door fitter to come along and adjust your hinges.
If you are having any issues with multi-point door mechanisms, please do not hesitate to contact me.
This is a piece I really should not have to write, but all too often, people call me out for reasons that could easily be avoided or they have called me out too late for an expensive repair, when avoiding the problem was possible.
Common reasons to avoid using a locksmith:
So, let’s start with cars. If you are going to lose your car keys, or lock them inside your car, the chances are, you are going to do it when your spare key is stuck back home at the opposite end of the country. I have done a fair few jobs now where people have been on holiday/visiting distant relatives/doing distance work, etc and they leave their spare car key at home rather than bring it with them to leave in their temporary accommodation. Car entry is not cheap, and it might mean you lose a half day waiting for the auto locksmith to arrive, which will put a downer on your holiday, or might mean you have to see those distant relatives for longer than you wanted, or that you lose the sale you travelled halfway across the country to get. At the same time, please remember to actually remove the spare key from your car when you arrive at your destination. If you are locked out of your vehicle, having the spare in the glove box is no help.
The next common one with cars, is not having a spare. When I am cutting keys at local boot sales, people ask me about prices and sometimes, the spare key is as nearly as much as their second hand car cost them in the first place. But why buy a car with only one key, especially when that key is on its’ last legs? A bargain vehicle only remains a bargain if you can drive it. I also get to see some very sorry looking remote fobs for cars. Cloning a remote fob before it gets to be useless can be a lot cheaper than generating a complete new key from scratch, especially with Fords that must always have two separate keys programmed when starting from new. And, as I said above, a spare is useless if you keep it in the glove compartment.
Never, never, never put your car keys down in your boot area. So many people open their boot at the supermarket, put the keys just inside the boot and then load the shopping. They then close the boot, having not unlocked the rest of the car and are now locked out, often with the spare in the glove compartment! (Have I mentioned that common mistake?) If you are approaching your car, when you unlock your boot, make it a habit to unlock the doors as well. And do not put your keys down anywhere in your vehicle. It might not be cool to hang your keys from a belt loop, but it might just save you the cost of a weekly family shop if you don’t have to call the locksmith. When in and around your car, only let go of the keys when they are in the ignition, and you are sat comfortably ready to drive.
People make just as many mistakes in the home. Children should never be given keys to play with. Besides the whole hygiene issue, they have a nasty habit of sticking keys into keyholes that they were not built for, thus breaking the key and often the lock as well. While on the subject of kids, if you have a bathroom lock that is getting a bit stiff, have it repaired or replaced before a small child locks himself/herself in and you are faced with hours of panic waiting for the locksmith to arrive. I recently went to a job where a toddler had locked himself in the bathroom and the lock disintegrated, with the broken bits obstructing the bits that needed to move. You can imagine the stress that poor child was under when I came along with my noisy drills and hammers, taking my time to ensure nothing flew open into the child’s face.
Got a night latch (Yale type latch lock)? Don’t trust the snib to hold that latch back even if you are just popping into the garden for a few minutes. Take your key. Pets and children are very good at closing doors with enough vibration to release the latch and lock you out with themselves on the inside and pans on the cooker (it can and does happen).
If you have a door with a multipoint locking system, oil it twice a year. Make it part of your routine when you change the clocks in spring and autumn. Use a good quality lubricant and squirt it everywhere you can see moving parts (lift the handles up and down with the door open to see) and then, when you hold the handles down to retract the latch, you will see a small gap the allows you squirt more lubricant into the heart of the mechanism. Give this about a five second squirt and work the handles up and down a few times to get the lubricant into those moving parts. This simple exercise can save you a very expensive visit from your locksmith.
Lubricate all other locks as well. They get full of grit. Insects make nests behind handles and in lock cavities. Regular lubrication will keep your lock clean and lasting longer.
Finally, I get a lot of calls from customers telling me their key works on one side of the lock (Chubb/mortice locks), but not the other. My first reaction is to tell them to try a different key and more often than not, that sorts out the problem. They have just managed to bend a prong on the key itself. Always check other keys before thinking your lock is broken. Not all locksmiths will give you a free solution over the phone.
If you have any questions regarding the information above, or have any other issues, please get in touch via my contacts page.
Thanks for reading.
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Spring is finally upon us and now is the time when we need to think about all the damage the wet weather has been doing to our doors and locks.
Wooden doors will start contracting, as the moisture dries out of them and they may start to bang around in the breeze. Taking note of the problems of a recent customer, please be aware of the potential pitfalls of buying a draft excluding weather strip. If the weather strip is too thick, it can put strain on a mortice (chubb) lock and if you are having to push or pull the door when you turn the key, this will put undue pressure on the levers inside, which will inevitably break, locking you out at the worst possible time. A simple re-positioning of the lock keep in the door frame can alleviate the problem.
Wooden doors with multi-point locking mechanisms need extra attention. Over the winter, the swollen door will have been squeezing all the working parts and holding moisture around the metal, leading to rust. At the very minimum, these mechanisms should be oiled, however, calling your local locksmith to take the whole thing out of the door for a thorough examination might cost his call out fee, but could save you a lot more if the need for a complete new mechanism can be averted.
And with multi-point mechanisms in mind, many of us will be starting to use our patio doors now that things are warming up. These too, should be oiled now and at the end of summer. As a rule of thumb, double glazed doors where you have to lift the handles before turning key, should be as easy to operate with the door closed as they are when the door is open. So open the door and lock it, then close the door and lock it. If it is significantly more difficult to lock when the door is closed, you need to call your local locksmith to make the necessary adjustments. Again, a labour cost now is far better than the cost of a new mechanism.
If you own a holiday let property, now is the best time to have your locks looked at as the last thing you want is to have your locks fail when paying customers are using it. At best, you have to compensate the customer. At worst, you lose the business of that customer and all the potential recommendations they provide. What’s more, this is a business cost, so can be offset against your tax bill at the end of the financial year. What’s best – paying the tax man or having something to show for your money?
Experience has taught me that another time locks seem destined to fail is when pet owners go on holiday, leaving a friend or family member to come in daily to feed Tiddles, or water the plants. Most of us already feel we are burdening our neighbours when we ask them to do this, so how much worse will you feel if your lock breaks while they are in charge. Can they afford to pay for a locksmith in your absence? Will they have to take time off work waiting for a locksmith to come? While maintenance is not a guarantee that this will not happen, it certainly reduces the risk. Age of the lock and badly cut spare keys are the biggest contributors here, but poor maintenance is very high on the list of problems.
Should you have any questions regarding the above, please feel free to get in touch via any of the methods on my contacts page.
Firstly, let me say that I am not trying to do myself out of work, but I have attended a surprising number of jobs where I was not actually required at all. I thought I’d give you two examples – and maybe they could help others save some money:
The first was to a sliding patio door that was double glazed. Everything worked fine in the open position, but when the door was closed, the mechanism just would not lock. I immediately started looking for all sorts of things around the locking part of the door, but all seemed to be in good working order. Then I did what I should have done from the start. I stood back and looked at the whole door. The answer was obvious. My customer had an insect curtain made up of lots of thin wispy strands that hung down. A few of these wispy strands had got caught between fixed section and sliding section of the door, and were stopping it from going the last millimetre that would allow the door to lock. In just a few seconds I had everything working again, but this highlights that before calling a locksmith, a quick look at your door for any obstuctions could save you money.
The second case needs a little explaining. Among the many types of insect curtain around at the moment, are magnetic ones that magically close themselves behind you as you pass through. They are great, and can be obtained quite cheaply. At night, you simply tie them back like curtains. But, if you have a double glazed door, when you tie them back, you are moving the magnets closer to the metal keeps in the frame, and here is where danger happens. My customers had tied back their insect curtain and shut the door, not knowing one of the magnets had attached itself to the door frame. As they engaged the locking mechanism, the magnet was torn from its place in the curtain and pushed into the hole where one of the mechanism hooks slid into place. Somehow, the magnet managed to get on top of the hook, and wedged, making the door un-openable. Not knowing any of this until I found the magnet, made the job very frustrating as there was no apparent reason for the door not to work. So, if you have a magnetic insect curtain, be sure it is not stuck to the frame in any place before you lock the door.
If you have any questions about the above, or if you do run into lock problems and cannot find an obvious cause, or you simply need help with them, please do not hesitate to get in touch via any of the ways on my contacts page.
