Access Control Systems for Orlando Businesses

Who asks us for access control in Orlando

Property managers come first. A company running dozens of vacation homes around Kissimmee and Davenport, or a handful of condo buildings near downtown and Lake Nona, cannot drive a new key to every door each time a cleaner, a maintenance tech or a contractor changes. Codes and fobs issued and canceled from one place solve that, and most systems keep a record of which code or fob opened which door. Single rental homes usually need a smart lock rather than a system, and our vacation rental locksmith page covers those.

HOAs and apartment communities are the second group. Central Florida communities are built around shared amenities: the pool gate, the fitness room, the clubhouse, the mail room, and a vehicle gate at the entrance. A fob that opens the pool only during posted hours, lets residents into the gym, and stops working the day a lease ends replaces a pool key that half the neighborhood has copied over the years. The motor and arm on a vehicle gate are a gate contractor's equipment, and we say so rather than guess at it; the pedestrian gate beside it, the pool gate and the amenity doors are our work.

Hotels, restaurants and shops along International Drive, Sand Lake Road and the tourist corridor have the staff turnover problem at its sharpest. When people change every few months, re-cutting keys never ends. Deleting a code or a fob takes a minute and nobody has to chase a key. Doors that stay on keys get rekeyed at the same time, so the old keys stop working too.

Offices, clinics and warehouses round out the list: suites in Maitland and Lake Mary off I-4, medical offices around Lake Nona Medical City, and distribution and light-industrial buildings near Orlando International Airport and the 528. Those buildings usually need a mix: a reader on the main entry, a keypad on the stock room or the server closet, and exit hardware the fire marshal will accept.

Standalone keypad and fob locks, or a networked system

A standalone lock is the electronic door lock most small businesses start with. The keypad, fob reader or card reader is built into the lock, the lock runs on batteries, and the list of users lives inside that one lock. Codes are added at the keypad or from a phone app near the door. For a single office door, the back door of a restaurant or a stock room, that is often all you need, and nothing has to be wired through the walls.

A networked system puts a reader beside each door and a controller in a closet that decides who gets in, with an electric strike or a magnetic lock doing the actual locking. Cloud-managed versions let an owner or property manager add and remove people for every door at every site from a browser or a phone, set the front door to unlock for business hours, and pull a report of who came in. The trade-off is wiring, power at each door, a network connection and, with many cloud platforms, a recurring software fee, so ask about that alongside the hardware.

A fair rule of thumb: a few doors, a short staff list and little turnover point to standalone locks. Many doors, a staff list that changes every month, or more than one location point to a networked system. Plenty of businesses do both, a networked front entry with standalone locks on inside doors. For a front door at home, see keypad and smart lock installation instead; this page is about business and community doors.

Electric strikes, magnetic locks and request-to-exit

An electric strike replaces the metal strike plate in the door frame. The door keeps its normal lockset or panic bar, and when a valid code, card or fob is presented the strike releases the latch so the door pulls open. People inside leave the way they always have, by turning the lever or pushing the bar, because the strike only controls entry from outside. On most commercial doors that already have good hardware, an electric strike is the cleanest way to add a reader.

A magnetic lock is an electromagnet on the frame header and a steel plate on the door. While it has power it holds the door shut; cut the power and the door is free. Because a maglock has no handle that releases it from inside, building and fire codes require release devices so nobody is trapped, typically a motion sensor above the door that releases the lock as someone walks up to it, with a push button beside the door as a backup. Maglocks suit some glass doors and gates where a strike will not fit, and they need that extra care to install correctly.

• Request-to-exit devices also tell a networked system that a door opened from inside is an exit, not a forced door
• Electrified panic bars are an option where an exit device is already on the door
• Door position switches report a door left propped open

Fail-safe or fail-secure: what the door does when power is cut

Fail-safe and fail-secure describe the outside of the door once power is removed. A fail-safe lock is unlocked without power and needs power to stay locked. A fail-secure lock stays locked without power and needs power to unlock. Either way, a properly installed electric strike still lets people leave from inside with the lever or the panic bar. Magnetic locks only come fail-safe: no power, no holding force.

The right choice depends on the door. A stock room, a server closet or a clinic's medication room usually wants fail-secure, so a storm that takes out the power does not leave it open. A door that has to release in an emergency usually wants fail-safe. And an electric strike on a fire-rated door has to be fail-secure, so the door stays latched and keeps working as a fire barrier. On the site visit we go door by door and agree which way each one should fail before anything is ordered.

Power outages, batteries and summer storms

Central Florida loses power in summer storms often enough that it has to be planned for. A wired system should run from a power supply with standby batteries, so readers and locks keep working through a short outage; how long depends on the battery size and the number of doors, and we size it with you. When those batteries run down, each door falls back to its fail-safe or fail-secure setting, which is why that choice matters.

Standalone battery locks do not care about the grid, but they do care about their own batteries. They warn on the keypad or in the app well before they die, many keep a key cylinder as an override, and some accept a battery held against outside contacts to wake the keypad. The fix for a dead lock on a Monday morning is a schedule: change batteries on a set date, not when someone finally notices the warning.

If the internet drops, a networked door does not stop working on most systems. The controller keeps its own copy of the user list, so cards and codes keep opening doors; what waits is remote changes and the activity log reaching the cloud.

Fire code and egress, done to the rules

Locking a door electrically does not change the fact that people must be able to get out. Fire and building codes have specific egress rules for electrically locked doors: how they release, what happens when the fire alarm sounds or the power fails, and where a manual release has to be. We install to those egress rules, and where a permit, an inspection or the fire marshal's sign-off is required, we coordinate with the building owner and the fire marshal rather than leave you to find out at inspection.

Tying a door release into a building's fire alarm panel is work for the fire alarm contractor who services that panel, and we coordinate with them when a door needs it. A door that already has a panic bar keeps it. Our commercial locksmith work covers the exit devices, closers and storefront hardware that access control sits on, and a sticking door or a closer that slams gets fixed before any electronics go on it, because a reader on a door that does not latch secures nothing.

How an access control project runs

It starts with a phone call: how many doors, what kind of doors, how many people, and whether anything is already installed. From that, the dispatcher can usually tell you whether you are looking at standalone locks or a networked system, and books a time for a technician to see the building.

On the site visit the technician looks at each door and frame, the hardware already on it, where power is available and how wiring could reach a controller, and talks through who needs access where and when. You then get a free estimate for the whole project, and nothing is ordered until you agree to it.

Install day covers the hardware, the wiring, the readers and a test of every door: present a credential, walk out from inside, cut the power and check that each door does what was agreed. Then we set up the users with you, issue the first codes or fobs, and show whoever runs the building how to add a new hire and remove someone who left. A door added later joins the same system instead of starting over.

• Have a rough list of doors and how many people need each one
• Tell us if the building has a fire alarm panel, a landlord or a board whose approval is needed
• For HOAs and condos, note what controls the vehicle gate and which amenity locks are already in place