A Metrotown suite door, a Lougheed townhome, a 1950s bungalow up in the Heights: each is a different number of cylinders. We quote per cylinder on the phone, cut the keys in the van at your door, and test every one before we leave.
Rekeying in Burnaby is overwhelmingly a suite-door job. The housing sits heavily in strata: towers around Metrotown and Brentwood, mid-rise condos off Kingsway at Highgate, townhome clusters near Lougheed and along Cariboo Road. Two things follow from that. The lock on your suite door is yours, but almost nothing else in the building is. And a Burnaby townhome is never one cylinder.
A rekey reaches every cylinder you hold a key for and nothing you hold a fob for. In a Burnaby condo that usually adds up to more than people expect: the entry deadbolt, the patio hardware, the mailbox lock, the storage locker cylinder down in the parkade, and any padlock you want brought onto the same key. Get all of them out on the one visit. The pinning is the quick part, and a second call-out for the locker you forgot costs more than the locker cylinder did.
A rekey keeps your lockset on the door and swaps the pins inside the cylinder, so the keys we cut become the only ones that work. A lock change takes the whole unit off. The cylinder usually decides which, not your budget.
The tell is how the key behaves. If it turns only at one precise angle, feels gritty, drags on the pins, or sits in a plug with play, the cylinder is worn past where fresh pins help. New pins land in the same tired spring seating and you are back inside a year. We see it in Highgate condos built around 2003 and Metrotown stock nearing two decades, and there we quote a replacement. A bolt that will not throw cleanly is a different fault: a worn latch or a misaligned strike plate.
Build era predicts the keyway here more reliably than the neighbourhood does. Buildings from before roughly 2005 are disproportionately pinned to Kwikset's KW1, which is quick and cheap to rekey and not much of a barrier to picking. Towers finished along the Lougheed and Brentwood corridors after 2010 more often run Schlage's C keyway, SC1, or a restricted keyway the developer specified. KW1 and SC1 both ride in the van with the key machine.
A restricted keyway changes the plan, because its blanks are controlled. We identify it in the first minutes at your door and say whether we can cut for it or whether it goes back through your building manager.
A Burnaby strata rekey is rarely one suite. Calls from Brentwood property managers are usually a whole floor or a whole building after a tenant dispute or a lost fob, quoted per cylinder rather than as a flat job. Under about thirty units we can assess, quote and finish in one visit. Bigger buildings need the manager to coordinate access, so the schedule gets booked first and the work second. A council that has just changed management companies and cannot name the building keyway starts with an on-site hardware assessment.
Where a building already has a master system, we confirm the hierarchy first. Suite keys open individual doors, the manager's key opens all of them, and each cylinder gets pinned twice to do both. Rekey a few suites in isolation and that breaks quietly.
Most of the time saved on a Burnaby job gets saved before the truck arrives.
At Lougheed we work the Burnaby side of North Road only. If an address sits near that line we confirm it on the phone before dispatching.
Not all of Burnaby is a tower. The mid-century stock, meaning the rental blocks off Rosser Avenue, the bungalows through Burnaby Heights and Willingdon Heights, older Edmonds houses, the South Slope and Cariboo, runs mostly Kwikset or older Weiser, much of it already on a second or third rekey. Deer Lake, Buckingham Heights and Government Road add Weslock and Arrow cylinders from the 1970s and 1980s. Period-compatible replacements ride on the truck beside standard deadbolts, Schlage B-series, Kwikset SmartKey and high-security cylinders, because backset and finish on a fifty-year-old door rarely match a big-box shelf.
Pre-1950s houses in the Heights, along Ingleton and Sperling and the streets off Pender, plus the oldest Edmonds blocks near the New Westminster boundary around Stride Avenue, are another matter: mortise lock bodies, older lever sets, passage knobs that predate standardised cylinder prep. All serviceable, and we flag what we are looking at while still at the door. Edmonds also turns up deadbolts already rekeyed with mismatched pins, so the key binds from the first try. A clean lock change beats repinning that twice.
New construction has the opposite problem. Infill houses and laneway homes through Willingdon Heights are handed over on a builder's key that every trade on site carried for months. It is still live on possession day, so those get rekeyed on day one.
These ranges are per cylinder, and they read the same in a Capitol Hill bungalow or an Amazing Brentwood suite. Cylinder count moves the total, not the neighbourhood. Multi-door and whole-building strata work is quoted as a package and normally lands lower per door.
| Service | Typical range (per cylinder) |
|---|---|
| Rekey, one residential deadbolt, knob or lever | $35 – $65 |
| Rekey, several cylinders keyed alike on one visit | $25 – $50 each (bulk) |
| Grade 2 residential deadbolt, supplied and fitted | $120 – $200 |
| Grade 1 or high-security deadbolt, supplied and fitted | $180 – $320 |
| Commercial cylinder, change or rekey | $80 – $160 per cylinder |
| Service call, credited against the work | $49 – $75 (applied to work) |
After-hours and overnight calls cost more than a daytime booking. You hear that rate before anyone is dispatched, and the service call is credited against the work either way.
Building address, suite number, and how many doors take a key. For a tower add the visitor parking level.
The technician reads the keyway off the cylinder, checks it for wear and plug play, then confirms the price.
Keys are cut in the van and tested in the lock while you watch, patio and garage cylinders included.
Most Burnaby stratas accept a battery-powered deadbolt that drops into the existing door prep without altering the door, the frame or any wiring. That is the line their bylaws generally draw, and the Schlage Encode, Yale Assure and August Pro sit on the right side of it. Check fit first. Post-war Burnaby doors mostly carry the standard ANSI prep with a 2-1/8 inch bore, which is what consumer smart deadbolts are built around. The pre-war mortise preps in the Heights and old Edmonds are a different job entirely.
Same-day lock changes and rekeys from Capitol Hill down to Big Bend.
A rekey rarely travels alone. The same visit usually picks up a mailbox cylinder, a locker padlock or the patio slider nobody has been able to lock since spring.