New Lock Installation
Cutting a fresh hole in a door is the one part of this trade you cannot undo, so the door gets read carefully before any saw touches it.
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Installation means cutting rather than swapping. A door with no keyway at all — a garage side door carrying only a passage knob, an interior door being turned into a locking one, a new slab hung in an old frame — needs holes bored in an exact relationship to each other and to the jamb. Nothing about that is reversible.
Construction decides most of it. A solid timber slab accepts hardware almost anywhere. A hollow core door has a narrow block of wood laminated in behind the lock position, and bore outside that block and there is nothing but air holding the lock to the door. A moulded fibreglass or steel skinned door has its own lock block plus a skin that blunts a hole saw quickly.
What is assessed before anything is cut
- What the door is built from, established by tapping it and by the weight of the swing rather than by the finish, because a hollow core door can be painted to look like anything.
- Where the lock block sits on a hollow core or moulded door, which limits how far above an existing knob a deadbolt can go and sometimes rules out the height you had in mind.
- Whether the opening is a fire door assembly, common between a garage and a house. Extra holes and the wrong hardware both undermine what that door is there to do, and there is specific hardware made for that opening.
- Whether the frame can take the strike. A bolt is only as strong as the timber behind the jamb, and a hollow void between jamb and stud needs packing out rather than longer screws driven into nothing.
- How the door currently hangs. A slab that drags, springs back off the stop, or has to be lifted to latch will fight every lock ever fitted to it.
Have this settled before the visit
- Which door, and whether it is exterior, interior, or between a garage and living space.
- Whether you want a keyway on both faces or a thumbturn on the inside.
- Whether anyone in the household would struggle to find and use a key from the inside while leaving in a hurry.
- Whether the door is hollow, solid timber, steel skinned or fibreglass, if you happen to know.
- Whether a storm or screen door in front limits how far new hardware can project.
If a lock is already in the door and you simply want a different one in the same holes, no new boring is involved and the job is much smaller. see lock change and replacement.
Common questions
Can a deadbolt be added above an existing knob?
On a solid door, almost always. On a hollow core or moulded door it depends entirely on how tall the internal lock block is, because the bolt has to land in solid material rather than in the void. Where the block is short, the deadbolt goes as close above the knob as the trim allows instead of at a chosen height.
How high should a new lock be mounted?
Convention puts a knob near waist height and a deadbolt roughly a hand's width above it, but the real constraints are the lock block, the rails of a panelled door, and comfortable reach for whoever uses the door most. A deadbolt centred on a thin panel rather than a rail is a weak installation no matter what height it sits at.
Can a lock be installed in an aluminium framed or glass door?
Yes, but not with residential hardware. Those doors take narrow stile hardware sized to the width of the frame member, and forcing a standard bored lock into one destroys the stile. It is a different part list, so it is worth naming the door type on the phone.
Could I do it myself with a boring jig?
A jig will give you a straight hole, which is the easy half. What it will not do is align the latch to the strike, set the strike into solid framing, or tell you whether the door still swings true afterwards. Those are the parts that turn a neat hole into a lock that still works next winter.
Related locksmith services
Describe the lock or key problem
A short description of what happened gets the right tools on the vehicle.
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