Locksmith in Craighall Park, Randburg

Craighall Park is a suburb of high walls and motorised gates, and that arrangement moves the whole question somewhere most households have never examined. On a property with a manual gate, getting in requires a key, and everybody understands what a key is. On a property with a motorised gate, getting in requires a button — and a button is a thing that lives in a car, in a handbag, on a hook by the door, and in the pockets of an unknown number of people. A gate that will not open keeps us out too, which locksmith near me addresses directly.

The uncomfortable part is that a remote is a key which nobody treats as one. Households who would never leave a house key in an unlocked car leave the gate remote clipped to the sun visor without a second thought, and the remote opens the wall the whole property depends on. It is also a key that gives no sign of having been copied, lost or kept, and that carries no marking to say what address it belongs to — which cuts both ways. Households in Craighall Park book commercial locksmith work on the same number as everything else described here.

None of this is an argument against motorised gates, which are convenient and here to stay. It is an argument for treating the remote as the key it actually is: knowing how many exist, taking one out of the system when a car is stolen or a remote goes missing, and not leaving one where it can be taken with the vehicle. Where a reset is needed the physical side is quick, and the pedestrian gate beside it usually needs an honest look too — generally simple lock repair rather than anything larger.

Remotes that have gone missing are the call people make late, usually weeks after the fact, because the significance takes a while to register. A remote left in a car that was broken into, a set handed to a contractor during building work, a unit that simply vanished. Each of those is an outstanding key to the main entrance, and unlike a metal key there is nothing to look at and nothing to hand back.

Second is the pedestrian gate, which is where a great deal of the actual traffic goes and where very little of the attention does. Households spend well on the driveway gate and its motor, then keep a small side gate on a fitting that was cheap when it was installed and has since spent a decade outdoors. That gate is used by staff, by deliveries, by everybody on foot, and it is frequently the weakest thing along a very good wall.

Third is what happens when the power or the motor fails, which on these properties is a practical problem rather than a security one. A household that cannot open its own gate manually, at night, in the rain, has a real difficulty on its hands. Knowing where the manual release is and having tried it once, calmly, in daylight, is worth doing and costs nothing at all.

The single change worth making on a Craighall Park property is a change of attitude rather than of equipment: start counting remotes the way you would count house keys. How many exist, who has each one, and is that still the right list. Households are frequently surprised by their own answer, particularly after building work, a change of car or a few years of ordinary life, and the count itself costs nothing but ten minutes. Treating a remote as the key it really is takes some persuading, even for a locksmith in Randburg on the busier evenings.

The second is about where a remote sleeps. A unit clipped to a sun visor in a car parked on the street is a key to your wall left in a place you would never leave a house key. Taking it into the house is a small habit and it removes the commonest way these things go astray. Where one has already gone — with a car, with a contractor, or simply lost — the right response is to take that unit out of the system rather than to hope.

The third is the gate you walk through. A great deal of money goes into the driveway gate and its motor, and then the pedestrian gate beside it carries whatever was cheapest at the time, ten years of weather later. That gate is used constantly and by more people than the driveway one. Bringing it up to the standard of the wall it sits in is inexpensive, and a modest lock change there is usually the best-value item on the property.