Door Lock Repair in Orlando, FL

Deadbolt won't lock or the door won't latch

Try this before you call: open the door and turn the deadbolt. If it throws and retracts smoothly with the door open but jams with the door shut, the lock is fine and the bolt is hitting the strike, the metal plate set into the frame.

In Orlando that usually comes down to the door moving. Wood doors and frames take on moisture through the humid summer and the afternoon storms, and a house settles a little in its first years, so a bolt that slid home in March can drag by August.

The fix is in the frame rather than the lock: the strike is moved or its opening enlarged, loose hinge screws are swapped for longer ones that reach the framing, and the latch is tested until it catches with an easy push. Leaning on a door to lock it wears out the bolt, so fix it early.

Stiff cylinders and the right lubricant

A key that drags, catches or needs jiggling usually points to grit, a dry cylinder or a worn key. Try a spare first: if the original turns smoothly and a copy does not, a new key copied from the original solves it.

Use a lubricant sold for locks, and only a little. Schlage has applied a liquid lubricant to its pinned cylinders at the factory since 2014 and lists Fluid Film as acceptable in the field. Allegion's care notes for its padlocks warn that too much graphite attracts moisture and gums up the cylinder, which matters in a city this humid.

If cleaning and lubricating do not free it, the pins inside are worn or damaged. The technician takes the cylinder apart, replaces what is worn and pins it back to your current key, so nobody in the house needs a new one.

Broken key stuck in the lock

If a key snaps in a door lock, stop turning and leave the broken piece alone. When the broken end sticks out far enough to grip, a straight, gentle pull with needle-nose pliers sometimes frees it; skip the superglue and the hairpin, which can turn a simple extraction into a new cylinder.

We pull broken keys from door locks, deadbolts, padlocks and mailbox locks with tools that hook the fragment instead of pushing it, then cut a new key. A key snapped off in a car door or ignition is covered on our ignition repair page.

Loose levers and tired builder hardware

Plenty of houses in Lake Nona, Winter Garden and Horizon West came with entry-level levers and handlesets, and a few years of daily use shows. Levers start to droop, wobble or spin without pulling the latch back, and a thumb latch on a handleset stops lifting.

Most of that is repairable. A wobble is often a set screw or mounting screws that have backed off, a drooping lever usually means a worn spring in the lever's housing, and a handleset grip that has worked loose from the door can be reset and tightened.

The technician fixes or swaps the worn part and checks the latch and the deadbolt together, since the two often fail side by side.

Sliding glass doors, pool doors and mailbox locks

On a slider, the latch hook and the keeper on the frame drift apart as the panel shifts, and many slider lock faults come down to that gap. The sliding door lock repair guide walks through what you can check yourself first.

Doors that open onto a pool deserve priority. Florida's pool safety law lets a new home pool pass final inspection with, among other options, a self-closing, self-latching device on every door from the house to the pool, with the release no lower than 54 inches above the floor, so a latch that has stopped catching on its own is worth fixing first.

Mailbox locks come up often too, from a key snapped in a cluster box door to a curbside lock seized by rust. Who may change one comes down to who owns the box, as our guide to lost mailbox keys explains.

Keypads and smart locks that stopped responding

A keypad that goes silent, or flashes and refuses to turn, is usually asking for batteries. Kwikset, for example, says a SmartCode deadbolt that flashes red three times with three beeps has a battery too low to lock the door, and the fix is a fresh set.

When new batteries do not help, look at the setup and the door. Kwikset's troubleshooting also names a door-handing step that was never done and an internal cable that is not properly connected, and a bolt dragging on the strike can stall the motor, a familiar call from vacation rentals in Kissimmee and Davenport.

We repair the lock, or reset it and its codes once the owner or manager signs off. If it has to be replaced, our smart lock installation team fits a new one, and hosts can see how we look after vacation rental locks between guests.

Panic bars, closers and storefront locks

Business doors take the most abuse, from restaurant back doors on Sand Lake Road to hotel and retail exits along International Drive. Exit devices from Von Duprin, Detex and similar makers wear with use until the bar needs a hard shove or the door no longer latches behind the last person out.

Door closers are often adjusted rather than replaced. A typical hydraulic closer has separate settings for the main swing, the last few inches before the latch and the backcheck, so a door that slams or never quite closes usually just needs them reset.

Aluminum storefront doors use narrow-stile locks and deadlatches that need matching parts, and we repair those too. Our commercial locksmith page covers rekeys, master keys and the rest of the business work.

Door lock repair, rekey or replace: the honest answer

Repair is the right call when the lock is sound and one part or one adjustment is wrong. If the lock works but too many people have keys, a rekey resets the pins so the old keys no longer turn it, without buying new hardware.

Repair stops being worth it when the lock has corroded through, the cylinder or bolt was forced, the parts are no longer made, or the bill would come close to a better lock. Then we tell you and price a replacement instead of patching it.

If someone forced the door, call any time up to midnight and a technician comes out the same day to make it lockable again. A jamb split at the strike is reinforced, damaged parts are swapped, and a lock that was forced is replaced rather than repaired.