LOCKED IN

During my years as a Locksmith in and around Adelaide, I have been called to help more people locked out than I could possibly remember.  I must say, last week was the first time I was called to help a customer that was locked in!
The call came late one night, from a customer who was moving into a new home office.  The property was in North Adelaide, there was a gate at the front of the townhouse, a screen door and a main wooden door.  Obviously unaware, the customer unlocked her screen door and then wooden door to access the premises, she then locked the screen and shut the wooden door, leaving her keys between the screen and wooden doors.  Normally not a problem, just open the wooden door and get the keys.  In this case, the wooden door was fitted with an older style Lockwood 001.

This particular model of deadlatch (not in production anymore) requires a key to unlock the internal side of the lock.  So when the customer shut the door, it was deadlocked, and unable to be opened without a key.  And of course her keys were in the screen door lock, which she had also locked.

She was locked inside her new office, and unable to unlock the door.  The back door was a carbon copy of the front door, (also deadlocked.)
After a few unsuccessful  attempts at picking the screen door open to retrieve her keys, I abandoned that method of entry in favour of trying to reproduce a working key by reading the pins in the gate lock which happened to use the same key as the screen door.

In about 5 minutes I had a working key for the property and was able to gain access.  I recommended that I cut 2 more keys for the customer who should place them inside the property, somewhere out of sight, to stop this happening again.

It is worthy of note however, the current Lockwood 001 deadlatch automatically unlocks the inside knob whenever the key is turned from the outside.  It is possible to deadlock it once inside, but this can only be done with a key.
I know that a lot of Real Estate agents around Adelaide are requesting these be fitted for that very feature, and they are an extremely reliable and long lasting deadlatching solution.