Master Key Systems in Cupertino
Quoted once the doors have been counted on site. One key sitting above a key for each door, for an owner holding a strip on Stevens Creek or a manager with a corridor of suites.
custom quote
Typical price
17 min
Avg. arrival
24/7
Availability
A master key system is a hierarchy held in metal. Each tenant, each department or each crew opens their own door and nothing beyond it. A master opens a floor, a row of suites or a whole property. Sometimes a grand master sits above that for an owner or a manager. Drawn properly, it replaces a drawer of keys with one worth protecting. Drawn carelessly, it produces keys that open doors nobody intended, which is worse than having no system at all.
Which is why nothing here is quoted over the phone. Every opening is walked and counted first: what hardware hangs in it, whether the cylinders can carry the pinning, who needs to reach it, and which doors must stay outside the system entirely. There is always at least one of those, and usually more than the owner expects. A server room. A records cabinet. A supply closet with controlled stock in it.
In Cupertino the recurring shapes are a suite of offices along Stevens Creek Boulevard, a medical or dental practice with treatment rooms and a records room, a small retail row with a shared rear corridor, and the one that is most often overlooked: an owner holding several rental houses across the city, where a single restricted keyway across the portfolio does more work than anything else on this page. Nearly two homes in five here are rented, and a landlord with five houses is otherwise carrying twenty keys and hoping the labels are right.
The drawing is the job and the pinning is the afternoon. After the walk, the levels are sketched on paper, a restricted keyway goes underneath so no key can be copied at a kiosk, and each cylinder is pinned on the van bench with master pins stacked above change pins, then tried in its own door with both keys. Existing cylinders in sound condition are repinned into the system rather than thrown away, which is usually the largest saving available. Keys are stamped by level and signed for against a log. You are left holding a chart that lists every door against every key that opens it, with blank rows for the doors you add next year.
Cost is one itemized figure after the walk, because door count, key levels, keyway choice and the state of each cylinder move the number too far for a published range. The $89 visit is the survey and it counts toward the job. An approved quote holds. A single door repinned later, when a tenant leaves, is $29 to $47 and stays inside the system.
“We own a small strip of five units and had ended up with nine unrelated keys, one of which nobody could place. He counted every door himself, drew the chart with us at the counter of the corner unit, and quoted $940 in writing before a single cylinder was ordered. Each tenant keeps their own key, we hold one that opens all five plus the corridor and the meter cupboard. Cylinders went in over a Tuesday morning and the invoice matched the quote to the dollar.”
All sixteen jobs are printed here, fourteen with ranges and two quoted once the doors have been counted on site. What moves a figure inside its range is the door, not the lock: a leaf that still hangs true takes the low end, a leaf that has dropped on its hinges or carries a narrower old bore takes the high one. Describe the door on the call and the range closes to one figure.
- Daytime (7am–8pm)standard rates
- Evening (8pm–12am)+$55
- Overnight (12am–7am)+$95
FAQ
Master Key Systems: quick answers
Why can nobody price this on the phone?+
Because the figure depends on door count, how many levels of key you need and what condition each cylinder is in, and none of those can be known from a description. Anyone giving you a number without walking the site is guessing, and the correction arrives later, usually mid-installation.
I own five rental houses here. Is that a master key job?+
It works well, provided you are willing to run one restricted keyway across all of them. Your master opens every house. Each tenant holds a change key for their own address and nothing else. When one house turns over, that house alone is repinned at $29 to $47 per cylinder and the other four are untouched.
Our building master went missing with a former manager.+
The chart tells you exactly which doors that key opened, so only those cylinders are repinned. Sub-masters and change keys underneath usually stay as they are. Because the keyway is restricted, no counter could have cut a copy, which means one key is missing rather than an unknown number of them. The figure follows the door count on the chart and is said before work starts.
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Open 24 hours, 7 days
Say the year the house was built, and the rest of the call is short
Cupertino and the west valley, every hour of the day. The age of the door decides the work and the work decides the figure, so the number comes back on the call with the $89 service call and the hour already inside it, and it is the number on the receipt. Ninety days on the labor, in writing.