Concord neighborhood · 24/7
Ygnacio Valley: the sixties spine, where the cross street tells us the bore before anyone gets in the van
The long run of tract streets either side of Ygnacio Valley Road, laid out in the middle sixties and barely altered since. Single-story houses, wide driveways, garage side doors, aluminum sliders onto the back patio, and Mount Diablo at the end of most of them. Twenty-three minutes from the plaza.
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23 min
Avg. arrival
$89
Service call
24/7
Availability
These streets were built in phases between 1960 and 1968, and each phase took one hardware order. So an address here is a specification: two and an eighth bore, two and three-eighths backset, a key-in-knob set on the front and a deadbolt sitting six inches above it. Name the cross street off Ygnacio Valley Road and the right cylinder is already in the van, which is the whole reason a figure can be said on the call rather than guessed at the door. The steady job is a rekey at $25 to $40 per cylinder, and the count on one of these lots is short and predictable: front, garage side door, back door, yard gate, sometimes a shed. Four doors keyed alike is the usual request, and it goes out as one figure with the visit already inside it, never as a visit with cylinders added on afterward.
What wears out here wears out together. A knob set that has been turned by the same household since the Nixon years develops the same symptom up and down the block: the key has to be pulled back a hair before it will turn, and by the time two neighbors have mentioned it the row is due. Repinning fixes most of them. Where a cylinder is worn past pinning, a lock replacement is $112 to $285 per door, and the part going on gets named while the figure is being quoted. The deadbolts are a separate story, because they were not in the original order. Nearly every one on these streets was added later by a different pair of hands, which is why the bolt and the strike so often disagree by an eighth of an inch and why the door has to be pushed to lock. That is an adjustment, not a new lock.
The other two calls are the slider and the driveway. The factory catch on an aluminum patio door is a light-duty part and the replacement for it is the same light-duty part, so a pin driven through the frame at the height of the catch does more, and it goes on as a small line beside whatever else is being done. A house lockout is $115 to $195, and on these lots the garage side door is tried first because it is the least intrusive way in; nothing is drilled to save time, and a drill only ever follows a yes and never raises the figure. Households running a dog walker or teenagers who lose keys twice a term put a smart lock at $175 to $435 on the door from the garage and leave the front set alone. After 8pm the figure carries $40 and after midnight $75, said once and not revisited.
Give the cross street off Ygnacio Valley Road as well as the number, because these blocks repeat. Say which door it is: front, garage side, back, or the patio slider, and if you want doors keyed alike, count them before you call so the figure covers all of them.
FAQ
Asked from Ygnacio Valley
Twenty-three minutes for a street this central?+
The spine is long. Ygnacio Valley Road runs most of the width of the city, and a house at the Clayton Road end and one at the far southern end are the better part of ten minutes apart from each other. Twenty-three is the middle of that. The window that reaches you by text is drawn from where the van is standing, not from this average.
Our door still has its original 1963 hardware. Is that a problem or a help?+
A help. These streets were drilled for one bore on one backset, so whatever goes back into the door is already on the van and fitting is an hour rather than a morning. The variable is the deadbolt somebody added twenty years later, usually on a different backset with its strike run into trim. Describe that one on the call.
There is a wide driveway and a side gate. Does the gate need opening first?+
Say on the call whether it has a keyed latch, because on these lots the back door and the garage side door are often reached only through it. If the gate is the lock in the way it gets opened first, and it costs nothing extra. Wide driveways here mean the van parks on your property instead of blocking the street.
Open 24 hours, 7 days
Give the street, hear the figure, and the door gets opened the way it was built to be opened
Concord, Pleasant Hill, Pacheco, Clayton, Martinez and Walnut Creek, 24/7, holidays included. Say what the door is doing and one figure comes back with the $89 visit already inside it and the hour already counted. The lock is opened without damage wherever it can be, and the receipt shows what the call showed, whether the deed is in your name or the lease is.