Master Key Systems in San Rafael
One key for the manager over a set of restricted keys for each door below it, quoted per building once the doors are counted.
custom quote
Typical price
21 min
Avg. arrival
24/7
Availability
With a master key system, the manager carries one key that opens every door, and each tenant, nurse or shift lead carries a key that opens only their own. San Rafael has more of these than people suppose. A medical building near Kaiser with five practices and a shared records room. An apartment block in the Canal with a laundry and a bike cage. A condo association at Loch Lomond with a pool gate and a dock gate. A property manager who holds keys to a dozen houses in Dominican and Lucas Valley for owners who travel. A Fourth Street restaurant with an office, a walk-in and a bar. Marin Lock & Key draws the system, pins it, and hands over the chart that lets you run it without calling anyone.
The drawing comes first, then the pins. From a floor plan or a walk of the building, and a frank conversation about who needs which door, the technician sets out the levels: a grand master where a portfolio calls for one, a master per building or floor, sub-masters for a wing or a department, and a change key at each door. Beneath all of it sits a restricted keyway, so that no key can be duplicated at a kiosk, which is the usual way one key becomes three. Each cylinder is pinned at the van with master pins above the change pins, each key is stamped with its level and logged by number, and the chart shows which key opens which door, with spare rows left for the doors you add next year.
Master key work is quoted per project, since door count, keyway and restricted-key choices set the number and a single published figure would be invented. The 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 approved, the quote does not move. Repinning a single door later stays inside the system at $26 to $43 per cylinder.
You call and describe the building: door count and what kind of place it is. The full figure is named: the chart and the itemized quote follow the survey, and installation is booked once you approve. The van leaves and calls from the gate on the booked day, after the text with the name and the window. Fit: each cylinder pinned and tested in its own door, keys handed over logged and signed for. The receipt repeats the figure, cylinder by cylinder.
“The front door of our 1915 house closed behind me while I was watering the porch ferns, keys on the hall table. The call named $148. The text with the technician's name arrived while I was still on the porch, and the van was at the curb in seventeen minutes. He opened the original mortise cylinder without a mark on the brass, checked that the latch still caught, and the card was charged $148. The figure named on the call was the figure on the receipt, to the dollar.”
Every job is priced from the list below. The full figure is named on the call, before the van leaves the yard, and the receipt repeats it.
- Daytime (7am–8pm)standard rates
- Evening (8pm–12am)+$55
- Overnight (12am–7am)+$90
FAQ
Master Key Systems: quick answers
A property manager holding keys to twelve houses across Dominican and Lucas Valley. Is that a master key job?+
It can be, if the owners agree to a shared restricted keyway. The manager carries one master. Each house keeps its own change key for the owner and the housekeeper, and the gardener's key opens the side gate and the garage and nothing else. When a house leaves the portfolio, its cylinders are repinned out of the system and the rest stand.
Five practices share a building near Kaiser, with a records room and a night cleaner. Who carries what?+
The practices each carry a change key for their own suite and nothing else. The office managers share a sub-master that adds the records room. The property manager holds the building master. The cleaner's key opens corridors, restrooms and the janitor closet and stops there. If a receptionist leaves, that one suite is repinned and no other key in the building changes.
The building master went missing with a former manager.+
Only the cylinders that master opened are repinned, and the change keys and sub-masters beneath them can usually be kept. A restricted keyway means the missing key was almost certainly never duplicated, so the exposure is one key, not a drawer of copies. The chart shows exactly which doors are affected, and the figure for the repin follows from that count.
Related
More commercial services
24/7 — nights, weekends & holidays
One call, one full figure, the same figure on the receipt
Calls answered 24/7 across San Rafael and the Marin towns beside it. The $89 service call, the labor, the parts and the drive up the hill are inside the figure named on the call, and the receipt repeats it.