Lock Repair in Durham, NC

How Durham's weather wears on locks

NOAA describes the state's climate as humid, with moderately cold winters.

• Humid summers. Wood doors take on moisture and swell, so a latch that used to meet its strike plate begins to drag or miss. Often the fix is adjusting the door or strike, not the lock.
• Freezing rain. Cold-air damming can bring freezing rain to the state, and ice can glaze a keyway. Use a lock de-icer rather than hot water, which can refreeze inside the cylinder.

Simple upkeep helps: tighten loose hinge and strike-plate screws, clear grime from the keyway, and use a lubricant made for locks, not household oil, which collects dust. If a key drags or a bolt sticks, stop forcing it, because forcing is how keys break.

Older hardware in older houses

Houses from the 1890s to 1960, like those in the Trinity Historic District, may still have mortise locks on original doors, and decades of use loosen the parts. Repair is often the gentler route there, because a new lock must fit the same mortise in the door edge.

Rules that touch repair

• Historic districts. Sec. 3.17.1.F.1 of Durham's Unified Development Ordinance allows ordinary maintenance or repair with no substantial change in design, material or outer appearance. The city's classification chart, Form 1347, lists minor door repairs with matching materials as normal maintenance, with no Certificate of Appropriateness.
• Rentals. G.S. 42-42(a)(8) lists the lack of operable locks on doors leading outside as an imminently dangerous condition the landlord must remedy within a reasonable time after learning of it, and the landlord may recover the cost from a tenant who caused the damage. Since renters make up close to half of Durham households, report a broken outside lock in writing and keep a copy.

This is general information, not legal advice.

Describing the problem

• What the lock does: key drags, will not turn, handle loose, door will not latch or keyway iced.
• Which door, and a photo of the lock if you can take one.
• Whether the home is a rental, and whether it sits in a local historic district.

A snapped key is a job for broken key extraction, and if repair will not hold, see lock replacement. For the work itself, see lock repair.