I locked myself out of the house this morning. My brother, who I think has a spare key, lives two blocks away and so I walked to his house but he didn’t answer when I rang and and knocked. I walked back home. I got inside via a malfunctioning window; fortunately, I didn’t have to break it and I’m small enough to get through the opening despite the awkward angle. But I think I should have a key outside. Any suggestions?
I have one of these mounted to my house.
No hidden key. But three of our neighbors have keys.
We have a fake sprinkler system head on our lawn. I didn’t even know about it until I once told a friend of my son’s how to get into the house if I wasn’t there and he replied that the boys had hidden a key in a sprinkler head.
Thank you, @MaterS. I was not aware that such a thing existed.
Why not just get a keypad or touchscreen lock?
I’m looking for low-cost solutions at this point.
If hiding a key outside, be sure it’s in a place where you can retrieve it unobserved. For us, that means someplace in the back of the house since we back up to a cornfield. Without being explicit, we have something that is part of the house that has an indentation that nobody would think of looking at. You most likely have creative hiding places as well if you look for them.
There are a lot of places (no, don’t use the welcome mat lol…). I know they sell fake rocks you can hide a key in, but to me those are too obvious. Some places I have hidden a key are behind the vinyl siding on my house (on the bottom of the siding there are always gaps, places to hide it), Inside a couple of old bricks (one brick was solid, other had the holes, solid one covered the one with the hole. An old pill bottle can hold the key (if it is a typical schlage key or the like) and you can put that in a hole under a flagstone.
If you don’t want to put a keypad on your house door, then put one on the garage door and hide the key in there.
How about a lock box…with a combo? How much do those cost?
Keypads are one of the things that get my highest approval rating. They are awesome–no more hunting for missing or keys in the bottom of the purse, no more juggling a key while holding groceries or a toddler. Ours has extra features and cost about $100. I bought the $50 for DIL and it works just as well.
Okay, now I’m going to sound really stupid, but how does a keypad work? I’ve used my brother’s (it opens the garage door, and then one gets into the house from the garage), but my garage is not connected to my house.
Another maybe stupid question - do electronic keypads work if the power is out?
@doschicos:
They have electronic locks with battery backup that will work in a power outage. Because the lock doesn’t use much power until it has to open the mechanism, it likely would stay online a long time. I would asssume even a standard one without backup could be plugged in/wired into a small UPS unit that would last a long time.
Our keypad opens the garage door. We have an attached garage. It would not work if there is no power, hence the hidden backup key.
There are times when the keypad won’t open the first time the code is entered. We had to learn the hard way that if you re-enter the code too often, it clears the code and you are locked out.
Our keypad kept breaking.
I like the lockbox idea, I think I’m going to order one… looks like they’re about $25 for a mountable one:
https://www.amazon.com/Master-Lock-5401D-Wall-Mounted-Set-Your-Own/dp/B0002YP1UI/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1484407838&sr=8-2&keywords=key+vault
I hide my key in the garage. I can open the garage by the keypad or a remote.
I’m envious of all the people whose houses and garages aren’t in disrepair. One of the garage doors is totally inoperable (as in, broken and open). The other closes but only manually. Right now, I’d actually love it if someone stole all the junk in the garage, but so far, my dream has not become a reality.