The point where a house from the 2000s starts to move
The houses delivered in the early 2000s are reaching the age at which doors no longer close quite as they did on day one. The building has settled, the weather seals have flattened, the hinges have developed play: the rod linkage no longer meets its strike plates in exactly the same place. The symptom is nearly always the same — you have to lift the door, push it with your shoulder or force the handle to lock it. Dealt with at that stage, it is an adjustment. Left for two winters, it ends as a distorted multipoint mechanism.
The local climate makes it worse. Damp air for a good part of the year, the difference between a west-facing frontage and a gable left in the shade of the pines, high heat on dark joinery: a door leaf expands then shrinks, and a door that closes effortlessly in February can catch in August. Before concluding that a lock is dead, it is worth looking at the clearance between the leaf and the door frame, the alignment of the strike plates and the state of the roller cams. The mechanism is not always the culprit.
Gates, garages and waterside fittings
A call-out in this area rarely stops at the front door. The motorised gate whose side gate no longer lines up, the side door of the attached garage that drags on its threshold, the lock on the plant room that has been outdoors all year: these are ordinary mechanical parts, neglected because people learn to work around them. You end up leaving the side gate unlocked, then the garage door merely pushed to. That is how a secondary entrance becomes the weak point of an otherwise well-secured house.
Near the ports and along the canal, the enemy is salt and silt. Hut padlocks, locks on business premises, bolts on equipment chests: exposed mechanisms pick up deposits and seize, often at the end of winter. Two mistakes come up every time — flooding the cylinder with greasy penetrating oil, which then traps dust and sand, and forcing a key that resists until it snaps inside the cylinder. Rinsing the outside parts with fresh water and using a suitable dry lubricant is usually enough to restore normal operation.
How does this service work?
Techniques, typical situations, standards and things to watch out for: it is all on our locksmith repairs page. This page focuses on what the service involves in Gujan-Mestras.