In the upcoming months our office will be flooded with calls
from customers whose locks are frozen making them unable to unlock their home
or office door and even worse the car door. We have come up with a few tips on
how you can avoid being stranded in the cold with frozen locks.
If you have access to a lighter or matches you can use
them to heat up the key for the lock you are trying to unfreeze. After you have
heated the key up insert it into the lock and jiggle it around a few times
allowing the heat to thaw out the locking mechanism inside the lock and then
turn the key. The lock should open right up, but you need to be careful when
heating the key not only because metal heats quickly and you could burn
yourself but also when metal is hot it is very pliable and too much force could
cause you to bend the key making it unusable.
If you do not have a lighter or matches but have just stepped
out of your vehicle and noticed the locks on your home or office are frozen you
can use the heat the your vehicle generates to try to heat up the key. Your
vehicles engine generates an extreme amount of heat so simply place the key on
or as close to the engine block as you can and hold it there until the key is
hot then try to stick it into the lock, again be careful not to damage your key
while attempting to jiggle the lock.
There is a new handy little deicer on the market today that allows you to not have to worry about damaging your key it is called the The Hillman Group Lock De-icer available at some hardware stores. This device has a self heating pin inside of it that you can insert into the locks to thaw them out. Not very expensive so if you are living in a area where frozen locks are a common occurrence than it might be a great investment.
Maybe you do not have a lighter and your car is the one with the frozen locks do not worry we have a solution for you too. Hand sanitizer is carried by just about everyone and if you do not carry any right now we suggest you go get some. Since hand sanitizers are filled with alcohol you can use a little squirt on your key and the alcohol will thaw the locks in question for you. This is a much safer way than the lighter since you have no real chance of damaging your key but if your hand sanitizer is a lotion or one of the ones you get from Bath& Body works with the little beads in it DO NOT use it. If you do use it and put the key inside the lock residue will stay in there causing more problems down the road.
The best piece of advice we can give you is to stock up
on the
lock deicer which is sold at just about every hardware and drug store in
the world. A little bottle will run you a few bucks but will save you quite the
headache and stress of a frozen lock.
If all of our suggestions fail you we apologize but you need
to call the professionals and we always have a full staff of licensed
locksmiths standing by 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
