Locksmith Services in Broughty Ferry

Your local locksmith in Broughty Ferry

Broughty Ferry has the biggest houses we regularly work on. The jute money built substantial Victorian and Edwardian villas along the shore and up the hill behind it, and around them sit the tenements and flats of Brook Street and Gray Street and the newer housing towards Barnhill. We carry hardware to suit all of it, so most jobs are finished in one visit rather than becoming a return trip for parts.

How many ways into a big house? This is the question worth asking in the Ferry and it catches people out. A large villa rarely has one external door. There is the front door everyone thinks about, and then a back door, a garden door, French doors onto the terrace, a conservatory, a door into the garage and sometimes a cellar or basement door as well. Each of them is a way in, and a house is only as secure as its weakest one — which is almost never the front. It costs nothing to walk round and count them, and it is usually the doors at the back and side, fitted longest ago and overlooked since, that are worth attention first.

When your policy asks for more. Policies on higher-value homes more often specify what has to be fitted, and specify it on every external door rather than just the main one. For a timber door that usually means a five-lever mortice lock meeting BS3621; for a uPVC or composite door it usually means the cylinder and the anti-snap standards. It is worth reading the wording rather than assuming, because a policy that names every external door is a different proposition from one that does not, and the door that fails the condition is generally the one nobody looks at.

Period doors and their hardware. The older villas are mostly still on their original timber doors, which are generally better made than anything that would replace them. Bringing one up to a modern standard does not mean altering it — the lock sits inside the door, and from the street nothing changes. Where the pocket cut for the original lock does not suit a modern one, recutting it to fit is part of the job and we do that ourselves.

Flats and stair doors. Around Brook Street and Gray Street there are two doors to think about, the communal stair door and your own. Stair doors take more use than anything else in the building and their locks wear out first. The stair door is shared property, so it is not usually something one flat can order alone — we will tell you where you stand and quote in writing so it can be circulated to the other owners.

Doors that have started to stick. On the newer housing the most common call is a door that has to be lifted or leaned on before the key will turn — usually the door dropping rather than the lock failing, and far cheaper to correct before the gearbox goes.

Whatever the job in Broughty Ferry, you get the same promise: no call-out fee, no fix no fee, and a clear price agreed before any work begins.