Losing your house keys in an innocent mistake but can have drastic consequences. If your key is proving to be impossible to retrieve, you’re going to need to replace your locks or at least rekey them in order to maintain the security of your home and property. Here’s a guide to the questions you need to be asking yourself regarding post-lost-house key lock replacement, as prepared by the residential lockout experts at Top Locksmith.
How did I lose my keys?
If you can remember how you lost your keys, it will make a difference as to whether you should replace your locks. If you’re unsure of where your keys are, if they were stolen, or if you left them somewhere, we recommend replacing your locks – especially if the keys were lost in the vicinity of your property, or if they had anything linking them to your identity or address on them. However, if you dropped your keys down a sewer grade accidentally, the chances of anyone retrieving them and using them on your home is incredibly minimal, so you may decide changing locks isn’t a necessary course of action.
Did I lose my master key?
If your lost house key is a master key you should replace your lock. Master keys can open multiple locks, and when they are lost, your entire security infrastructure is risked. In this situation you need to rekey all your locks or have them replaced.
What is my budget?
The amount of money you are willing to spend will dictate whether your locks should be changed. Lock changes and lock rekeying have variable costs, but if you have a budget, lock replacement is more of a thoroughly conservative security restoration measure. If you need to have your locks upgraded anyway, it’s a good idea to simply replace them rather than rekeying. But, if you’re content with your locks, and simply want to deal with a lost house key, rekeying your locks would be a fantastic option.
Did I lose my spare key?
Spare keys are really important and can come in handy when you’re locked out of your house. A misplaced spare key shouldn’t be worried about especially if they have zero info on them linking them to your identity or address, but if you are worried about security, or if the spare keys were stolen, we recommend rekeying any locks that were paired with the spare key.
What type of locks do I have?
If you have low grade security locks, replacing them is a good idea anyway. However, if you already have high grade security locks in place, we recommend simply rekeying them and adding additional security measures rather than totally replacing them – unless you have a large budget that can accommodate this, and you’re planning on replacing the locks with a lock of equal or greater security levels.
Have I lost my house keys before?
The more house keys you lose, the greater the chances of them being used for a burglary are. This risk grows exponentially with every key lost. So, if you’ve lost multiple house keys, it’s absolutely essential for you to rekey all of your locks – and we recommend changing your locks to those that have keyless entry options, which will mitigate the chances of lost house keys being an issue for you in the future.