Garage Door Lock
in Los Angeles

What's the best lock for the garage side door?

For the man-door off the driveway or alley, a solid grade-rated deadbolt is the move, ideally with a reinforced strike plate and longer screws into the framing. On the older homes around Lincoln Heights and Boyle Heights the jamb is sometimes the weak link, so we check that the frame can actually hold a bolt before we install one. We can also key it to your house so you're not carrying a separate garage key.

Can you put in a manual lock in case the power goes out?

Yes. If your worry is getting locked out of a powered roll-up door during an outage, that's the opener's manual release, and we'll show you where it is and make sure it works. For actual security when the power's down, we install an interior slide bolt or a keyed deadbolt on the side door that doesn't depend on electricity at all. A lot of LA garages only have the motorized door and nothing manual, which is a real gap.

Is my garage really a weak entry point?

Often, yes, especially an attached one. If there's a door from the garage straight into your house, anyone who gets past the garage is basically inside. We see plenty of homes here where the big door is fine but the side door has a thirty-year-old knob lock and the interior passage door has nothing at all. Securing those two doors usually does more for the house than anything else we touch.

My T-handle broke, can you replace it?

That's a common call. The T-handle on a tilt-up or sectional garage door wears out or snaps, and then the cam latches don't pull in right. We replace the handle, reset or adjust the latch rods so the door catches at both sides, and check that the lock cylinder turns clean. If yours is an unusual size we'll match it on site or source the right one rather than force-fit something that'll fail again.