When you live in Massachusetts, you hear about the weather (or, as it’s more often pronounced here, “the weathuh”) a lot.
We all know the sudden weather changes from hot to cold – sometimes taking place in the course of a day – can be unpleasant when you have to be outside, especially in the dead heat of summer or bone-chilling temperatures of winter, but it’s not just your comfort that the weather affects – the extreme temperatures also affect your lock & key hardware.
Here are a few ways it does so:
• Expansion & Contraction of Parts Heat makes things like wood and metal expand, and cold makes them shrink – this goes for doors and lock hardware, too. Your door itself can actually shrink or expand in its frame, giving you door alignment issues that can affect your lock hardware as well (we talk about this in more detail in a blog post which you can find here). When this kind of change occurs, your home security is affected, as your locks may not latch properly.
• Freezing of Parts Winter is a hard time for locksmiths, not only because we spend so much time outside and in cold cars, but also because the tumblers in your door locks can freeze when it gets cold enough, leading to the tumblers being frozen in place, meaning our lock picking tools won’t work on them unless we enact our tried and true methods to unfreeze them. This can also be harmful for your keys themselves, because, if the lock is frozen and you try to jam your keys in there anyway, you could do damage to either the tumblers or the key itself.
• Shortened Battery Life Very cold weather is bad for batteries. This could include car batteries, phone batteries, tablet batteries, and more, but it’s also bad for your smart lock batteries. You may notice that, in the winter, you are having to charge your smart lock batteries more often than when you did in the summer time, and this is why.
Knowledge is power, and now that you know how the weather can affect your lock & key hardware, you are better equipped to prepare yourself and your locks for the changes the weather can bring. Call South Shore Lock & Key today to learn about how you can protect yourself and your home security against the harsh weather of New England!