Livermore neighborhood · 24/7
Portola and North Livermore: mixed blocks by the ACE station, houses in front and small shops between
The north end of town — Portola Avenue and the streets running off it, small shops and service counters, and the ACE station on Railroad Avenue with its lot filling before daylight. Older houses on mixed lots, some with a garage tacked on and some with none at all. Seventeen minutes.
17 min
Avg. arrival
$89
Service call
24/7
Availability
The train sets the clock on this side of town. The first departure off Railroad Avenue leaves in the dark, so a fair share of calls here land between four and six in the morning and every one of them is somebody who cannot afford to lose the hour. Keys shut inside a car in the station lot are $109 to $205. A fob that has gone silent after a decade on a ring is usually a flat cell, swapped on the spot; a fob that is genuinely gone is $89 to $189 to program at the vehicle, and $89 is the visit itself, so that floor has nowhere lower to go. A car with no key left anywhere is cut and coded at the curb for $165 to $409, with no flatbed involved. The overnight $80 is inside the figure you are given at four in the morning, not added to it afterward.
The housing changes by the block up here, which is why the first question is what kind of lot the address is. Some streets got the post-war package, an attached garage at the front and a hollow-core door from the garage into the kitchen with a builder knob on it, and there the usual Livermore failure turns up on schedule: the opener stops in an outage, the household discovers the front door key was last seen in a drawer, and everybody is standing on their own driveway at seven in the evening. Other blocks are older and have no garage at all, only a back door and a gate. A house lockout is $129 to $225 either way, and the lock is still doing its job when the van pulls out.
A rekey is $25 to $42 per cylinder and the second cylinder costs less than the first, because the $89 visit is counted once across the list instead of once per door. On these lots the list is usually four openings and stops there. Where a cylinder has been worn to the point that a neighbor's spare will wobble it open, a lock replacement is $118 to $299 per door, and the grade going on is named before it goes on.
The small commercial strip along Portola is the other half of the work. Nail salons, a print counter, an auto parts shop, a taqueria, each with an aluminum front and a steel door at the back onto the parking. A business lockout is $145 to $259. Storefront door locks are $159 to $449 per opening. A closer that has been slammed once too often by a delivery leaves a door that will not latch, and that is far more often a frame that has moved than a lock that has failed; packing the strike back into line is quicker and costs less than swapping hardware, and it gets tried first.
Tell us which side of Portola Avenue the address is and whether the house has an attached garage or none, since that changes where the job starts. For anything in the station lot, give the row and the color of the car, and say what time your train goes so the visit finishes ahead of it.
Most requested in Portola & North Livermore
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.