Livermore neighborhood · 24/7
Jensen Tract and Fifth Street: twenties bungalows, original hardware, and a garage out at the alley
The older grid south of downtown — Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Streets, small bungalows put up between the twenties and the forties on narrow lots, with the garage sitting at the back of the property facing the alley. Fifteen minutes from the Arroyo Road yard.
15 min
Avg. arrival
$89
Service call
24/7
Availability
The habit that runs the rest of this city does not describe these blocks. The garage here is a separate wooden building at the far end of the lot, opening onto the alley, and in most cases it is too small for a modern car and has become a place to keep a mower and a workbench. Nobody drives in and walks through into the kitchen, because there is nothing to walk through. People on Fifth Street still use their front door, and just as often the back porch door off the kitchen. A house lockout is $129 to $225, and on a lot this shape the technician starts at the door that can be opened without damage, which is usually that porch door rather than the street front.
What is on these doors is old and mostly worth keeping. Mortise cases sunk into the edge of the door instead of a cylinder bored through the face. Interior doors still hanging on warded locks a skeleton key will open, which is said plainly rather than talked around. Deadbolts that were cut in later by somebody in a decade of their choosing, at a height of their choosing, which is why the bolts on one street sit at five different levels while the knobs line up. A cylinder heavy with eighty years of grit is stripped, cleaned and repinned at $25 to $42 and will very likely outlive whatever would have replaced it. Where a case has cracked at the bolt, a lock replacement is $118 to $299 per door, fitted behind the original plate so the front of the house looks untouched from the sidewalk.
The alley garage is its own small problem. It closes with a hasp and a padlock, or an old rim lock with a key nobody has seen since the last owner, and it stands in weather all year with nothing between it and the summer sun. Padlocks seize while the key still turns freely and accomplishes nothing. Those come off and a shrouded body goes on, with the make named during the call so nobody meets an unfamiliar lock on their own fence. There is no opener and no keypad out there, and that is the honest picture of this neighborhood: fewer moving parts, older metal.
These houses change hands, and each sale arrives with a coffee tin of keys nobody can account for. A rekey at $25 to $42 per cylinder ends that. The realistic tally on a Jensen Tract lot is the front door, the back porch door, the alley garage and the side gate, and the whole list goes out as one figure with the $89 visit counted a single time across it. Houses held in one family for fifty years also tend to hold a safe, standing in a closet or bolted into a corner of the garage, with a dial and no combination written anywhere in the house. Opening one is $205 to $535 and the safe generally goes back into service the same afternoon.
Say whether the lock sits in the edge of the door or is bored through the face, because that decides what the technician loads before leaving the yard. Count the alley garage, the shed and the side gate before you call so one figure takes in the property. Alley numbering is thin, so give the nearest cross street.
Most requested in Jensen Tract & Fifth Street
FAQ
Asked on the way to the phone
How long until the van reaches me?+
Twenty-two minutes is the honest average across Livermore, measured from the yard off Arroyo Road. By area: Downtown and First Street 14 minutes, the Jensen Tract and Fifth Street 15, Portola and North Livermore 17, Sunset East 18, Las Positas and the airport edge 19, Springtown 20, Granada and Vineyard 21, Windmill Springs and Tapestry 23. Outside the city: Pleasanton 22, Dublin 26, Sunol and the canyon road 29, San Ramon 32, Danville 34. San Ramon and Danville are genuinely the slowest and you hear that on the call rather than standing in a driveway guessing. The window that arrives by text is drawn from where the van actually is, not from the average.
The opener is dead and I cannot get into my own garage. Is that your job or a garage-door company's?+
Both, and the split is worth knowing before you dial. We are a locksmith: locks, cylinders, deadbolts, keypads, keys and the doors those things are mounted in. If there is a keyed door on the property, and there almost always is, we open it without damage and cut you a key so tomorrow is not a repeat. What we do not touch is the overhead door mechanism itself. Torsion springs, panels, cables, the trolley and the opener motor are a garage-door company's work, and if that is what has failed you will hear it said plainly instead of paid for twice. The emergency release cord being pulled is the common version of this: the door rolls free, we get you into the house through a keyed door, and the track gets sorted on a weekday by somebody else.
Why is there a range instead of one price?+
Three things move a job inside its range. Which of the three doors it is, because a front-door cylinder, a garage service door and a hollow-core slab into the kitchen are different amounts of work. What the door is made of and how old the hardware is, since a 1962 knob set that has been painted twice behaves differently from a builder keypad fitted last year. And whether you want it keyed to match the rest of the house afterward. Once those three are settled the figure is a single number, not a span, and that number is what shows up on the receipt.
Can one key really open the front door, the garage service door and the slider?+
Yes, and it is the most common job on this site. The locks stay on the doors and take new pins, which retires every key handed out before today and puts the whole house on one blade. It is $25 to $42 per cylinder, and the second and third cylinders sit at the low end because the van is already parked in your driveway. Worth doing when you buy, when a contractor finishes, when a tenant moves out, or simply when you notice you are carrying one key out of three. The honest note: the door from the garage into the house can be rekeyed like any other, but it is still a hollow-core slab with a knob, and a deadbolt in it at $118 to $299 does more for you than new pins do.
Do nights, weekends and holidays cost more?+
Saturday, Sunday and holidays cost what a Wednesday afternoon costs. Only the clock changes anything: $45 between 8pm and midnight, $80 between midnight and 7am. Both are folded in before you hear a figure, so nothing new appears at the door. A house lockout that is $129 in daylight comes back as $174 at eleven at night and $209 at four in the morning, all of it still inside the published $129 to $225. Calls are answered 24/7, and the five in the morning call before a commute is treated as the ordinary call it is around here.
The keypad on our door stopped working in the heat. Is that a lock problem?+
Usually a battery problem wearing a lock costume. A hundred-degree afternoon in Livermore flattens keypad cells faster than the manual suggests, and a swollen door makes the motor work harder every cycle, which finishes them off sooner. If the cells are the fault it gets opened, powered and set to a code you choose. If the lock itself has failed, or the door has swelled enough that the bolt no longer lines up with the strike, that gets said and priced, not guessed at. A keypad deadbolt fitted new is $179 to $449.
I rent off Murrieta Boulevard. Do I need my landlord before you open my door?+
No, not to be let back into the place you pay for. Bring photo ID showing the address, or ID plus something on your phone that ties you to the unit, such as a lease page, a rent receipt, a utility bill or addressed mail. Give the building and the unit number on the call. Changing hardware is a different matter: a rekey or a new keypad on a rented door needs your landlord's agreement, and that is easier to settle before the van comes out than in a hallway afterward.
Will the lock still work after you open it?+
Almost always, and it never gets drilled without your say-so. Picks, decoders, shims and bypass tools handle sixties builder deadbolts across Sunset East and Springtown, original bungalow hardware in the Jensen Tract, aluminum storefronts, patio sliders, most car doors and most safes. The exceptions are a high-security cylinder, one already smashed, or one welded around a snapped blade. When yours is one of those you hear it, you hear what would replace it and what that costs, and you decide. The figure does not move either way, and agreeing to a drill never earns anyone more money.
We just bought a house south of Concannon. What should actually get done?+
Three things, in this order. Change the codes on the builder keypads, which costs nothing and takes two minutes, because the code you were handed has been through a builder, a realtor and everyone they let in. Rekey the metal locks so the keys from that same list stop working, at $25 to $42 per cylinder with everything brought onto one key. Then look at the door from the garage into the house, which on a new build is often a slab with a knob and no deadbolt at all. That last one is $118 to $299 and it is the only piece of this we will mention twice.
Do you cover Pleasanton, Dublin, San Ramon, Danville and Sunol?+
All of them, 24/7, at the same prices as Livermore. The clock changes a figure; the address does not. What the address changes is how long you wait: Pleasanton runs about 22 minutes, Dublin 26, Sunol and the canyon road 29, San Ramon 32 and Danville 34, against 14 to 23 inside Livermore. If you are up the valley you hear the longer number on the call, before you commit to waiting for it.
24/7 — nights, weekends & holidays
Say which of the three doors stopped you, hear the figure, and get inside
Livermore, Pleasanton, Dublin, San Ramon, Danville and Sunol, 24/7, holidays included. The garage and its service door, the slab between the garage and the kitchen, the front door you never open, a shop unit, a car or a safe: one figure comes back with the $89 visit and the hour counted inside it. And you do not get left standing in an open doorway, because the visit ends with a key or a code that works.