Lock Rekey Vancouver: $25-$45 per cylinder

Rekeying restacks the pins inside the cylinder you already own so a new key turns it and every old key stops. Nothing on the door changes, which is why it is the cheapest honest answer to a key problem.

• Standard cylinder: $25-$45 per cylinder. Schlage, Kwikset, Weiser and Yale. First two keys included.
• High-security cylinder: $60-$120 per cylinder. Mul-T-Lock, Medeco and Schlage Primus, on the registered keyway.
• Service call, standard hours: $75.
• Replace instead: $80-$160 a door installed.

After-hours labour starts at $150 between 5pm and 9pm and runs $250/hour from 9pm to 8:30am, quoted on the phone before dispatch. Every figure here matches the price list, which is the sheet the technician quotes from.

Rekey when the hardware is sound and only the key situation has changed: a move, a tenant leaving, a lost key, a contractor who kept a spare, a relationship that ended. The lock is fine. The key list is not.

Replace when the hardware itself has failed or you are moving up a grade. A cracked body, a drilled cylinder, a bolt bent in a forced entry, or a builder-grade knob you want turned into a Grade 1 deadbolt are all replacement jobs at $80-$160 a door: see lock change in Vancouver.

We have written the long version of that argument up twice, because it is the question we answer most: why rekeying is smarter than replacing.

A big-box store will sell you a rekeying kit for one keyway family and leave you to it, or sell you replacement hardware because that is the product on the shelf. Neither is the same as a locksmith restacking the cylinder you own, testing it in the door and handing you keys that are known to work.

The comparison, with the real numbers on both sides, is here: rekey at Home Depot or a locksmith.

If you can take the cylinder off the door, or bring the whole lock, the bench rate is the same and there is no service call. That is the cheapest way to rekey a padlock, a mailbox lock, a cabinet lock or a spare deadbolt you have not fitted yet.

The shop is at 4105 Macdonald St, Vancouver, BC V6L 2P1, with free street parking on Macdonald. Bring one working key if you have one. If you do not, we can still rekey from the cylinder itself.

Front, back, garage side door and the deadbolt nobody has used since 2009 can all be brought onto one key, as long as the cylinders share a keyway family. Most Vancouver homes are a mix of Schlage SC1 and Kwikset KW1, and where the families do not match we swap the odd cylinder rather than rekey the house twice.

A licensed technician reaches most Vancouver addresses in 20-30 minutes, and every cylinder is tested with the new key and with the old one before we leave: the old key has to fail, in front of you, or the job is not done.

Buying a place is the standard trigger. So is the end of a tenancy: see residential locksmith.

Offices, retail units and strata buildings are rekeyed per cylinder at the same $25-$45, or $60-$120 on a restricted keyway where key copies have to be signed for. Existing master key hierarchies are respected: a single change key can be rotated without disturbing the master above it.

Where there is no hierarchy yet, a master key system starts at $300 setup plus $30-$80 per door cylinder, or $60-$200 per cylinder on a restricted keyway, and includes the key registry. See commercial locksmith and high-security locks.