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Jeff Thies

On 1/2/2011 10:29 AM, zzzzzzzzzz wrote:
On Sun, 02 Jan 2011 09:35:23 -0500, wrote:

On 1/2/2011 8:59 AM, HeyBub wrote:
Steve Barker wrote:

How many doors does the place have? At $20 a pop it doesn't seem
like a big deal. I just change them when a house changes tenants. Keep
the old ones for the next house.

That's a SWELL idea. It's cheap, easy to implement, and simple.

Agreed- unless your rentals are in a really crappy part of town, or
market conditions don't let you be picky about tenants, having 3-4 spare
sets of knobs and deadbolts is the simple solution. Pick one brand you
like, look at the little numbers on the box to get enough keyed-alike
sets for the biggest house, and as the houses roll over, standardize
them all on the same brand and model. Once all the houses have the same
brand, with all the same mounting holes, swapouts only take a few
minutes, since you don't have to mess with the striker and such. And
since these are rentals, all of this can be used as an upkeep expense on
taxes anyway.

The same mounting holes aren't even necessary. Only the knob/lock part has to
change. The bolt can stay, as long as all of the locksets are the same.

I've got an assortment of locks here and thought I could use some of
these parts on my new front door (my house). It turns out that even the
old Defender lockset is different than the new (nor as strong), let
alone the Schlage or Quikset or Brinks.

With that said, it is still a good idea to keep with the same lockset.
Not that it is hard to swap it all out, or expensive. It looks like all
the screw holes match.

Jeff