Most residential calls in Burnaby land on one of two doors: a suite door in a Metrotown or Brentwood tower, or the front door of a house on a grid like Willingdon Heights, Edmonds or Capitol Hill. They are different jobs. One needs a visitor stall level and the right elevator bank. The other needs three or four cylinders keyed alike and an honest look at a frame that has moved. Licensed tech, price agreed before anything is touched. SAME DAY.
A lot of the residential work in Burnaby happens above the ground floor, and that decides what a locksmith can touch. From the suite door inward is ours: deadbolt, patio hardware, mailbox cylinder, storage locker, padlock. The fob system, lobby reader, parkade gate and intercom belong to the strata and its access control contractor. On the detached grids the whole envelope is in scope.
Keyways sort themselves by build era. Buildings from before roughly 2005, which covers much of the first Metrotown wave, are disproportionately pinned to Kwikset's KW1: cheap to rekey, thin on pick resistance. Lougheed and Brentwood corridor stock built after 2010 leans to Schlage's SC1 or a restricted keyway the developer chose, which changes the price and who may cut the key. Both blanks ride in the van. The newest towers, The Amazing Brentwood and the Willingdon and Beta Avenue builds, run Schlage B-series deadbolts, often with a building keypad at the suite door. The cylinder is yours. The reader is not.
Strata rekeys are rarely one suite. The usual Brentwood property manager call is a floor, or a building after a lost fob, priced per cylinder. Under about thirty units we assess, quote and finish in one visit; larger buildings need the manager to coordinate elevator access. Where a master key system already exists, the hierarchy gets confirmed before anything is pinned.
Townhome stratas in Lougheed, Highgate, Cariboo and South Slope almost never have one lock. Front entry, a patio slider or rear deadbolt, and usually a garage side door cylinder: two or three per unit, quoted together and keyed alike.
Detached Burnaby runs older. The rentals off Rosser Avenue, the bungalows on the Burnaby Heights and Willingdon Heights grids, older Edmonds and the lower slopes of Capitol Hill are mostly Kwikset or older Weiser on a second or third rekey. Deer Lake, Buckingham Heights and Government Road add Weslock and Arrow from the seventies and eighties, which take period-compatible cylinders. Pre-1950s houses in The Heights and the oldest Edmonds blocks near the New Westminster boundary are their own category: mortise bodies, early lever hardware, passage knobs that predate standardized cylinder prep. On the infill and laneway houses in Willingdon Heights, rekey on day one, because the builder's key has been shared with every trade for months.
A cylinder can wear past the point where new pins help. The key turns at one precise angle only, the action sticks, the plug has play. Fresh pins do not fix worn spring seating, so that is a lock change, not another rekey. Highgate condos from around 2003 and Metrotown hardware coming up on two decades both land here. Edmonds has its own version, deadbolts already rekeyed once with mismatched pins, where replacing beats correcting. A bolt that will not latch cleanly is a different fault, usually the strike.
In a tower we want the building address, the suite number and the visitor stall level before the truck leaves, because the level tells the tech which elevator bank to take. A few buildings run controlled elevator access and need someone from the strata to let us up, which adds time and is quoted that way.
The upper streets of Capitol Hill are narrow and steep, so we navigate by address rather than landmark and ask about side gates and laneway entries, because a large lot often hides the working door. Allow a longer window there. Burnaby Mountain is quoted longer again, more so on a weekday afternoon, since Gaglardi Way is effectively the only road up. Government Road driveways are long enough that plenty of those calls turn out to be a car key. Everywhere else, the window depends on where the nearest technician is when you call. At evening peak we route around the Lougheed and Willingdon interchange on Gamma or Springer, past the Metrotown bus loop on Nelson, and around Kingsway at Edmonds on Stride.
Rental Burnaby is not only purpose-built: converted houses with basement suites through Edmonds, garden-level units across The Heights, student rentals along the roads off Gaglardi. What decides a lockout here is identification matching the address, and converted houses are where that gets awkward. A basement suite often carries its own street number, the mail still arrives upstairs, and the owner is not always the person who can vouch for you. We say what we need on the phone rather than at the door.
Schlage B-series and Medeco deadbolts drop into the standard 2-1/8 inch bore most post-war Burnaby doors already have, so a Grade 1 upgrade needs no drilling. Smart locks in a strata are narrower: what bylaws generally allow is a battery deadbolt that swaps into the existing prep with no change to door, frame or wiring, the Schlage Encode, Yale Assure and August Pro among them. Ask the council before the install. A pre-war mortise prep is a different conversation, and forcing a fit is a security problem, not an upgrade.
Most door repair here traces to movement rather than to break-ins: Heights houses shifting on their foundations, seasonal wood movement on the Capitol Hill slope, settled soil under older Edmonds, doors swelling in Burnaby Mountain weather. Towers show the same symptom from building settlement, and the fix is usually a strike and hinge adjustment. Safe work follows the older houses too, Buckingham Heights, Government Road and Deer Lake, where a dial safe has outlived its combination. Manipulation first, and drilling is declared before it happens.
Hardware grade, cylinder count and time of day move the number. These are ranges, not quotes.
| Job | Typical range |
|---|---|
| Lockout (suite or house) | $95 – $160 |
| Rekey, one cylinder | $45 – $75 |
| Rekey, whole house at 3–5 cylinders | $120 – $200 |
| Deadbolt swap, hardware supplied | $130 – $220 |
| Grade 1 deadbolt (Schlage B, Medeco) | $220 – $380 |
| Smart lock supplied and installed | $180 – $350 |
| New deadbolt where there is no prep | $160 – $260 |
Labour sits inside those figures. The lockout figure is for the lockout itself, and the total for your address is confirmed on the call before anyone is sent. Keys are cut in the van, so a Highgate townhome can leave keyed alike in one visit.
Residential calls across the whole city. Pick a neighbourhood for the local detail on parking, keyways and housing stock.
The specific jobs, each with its own page.
Everything outside the house: vehicles, storefronts and strata commercial doors.