I forgot my key on the hole and locked the door when I got in. Now I can’t open the door.
I’m not concerned, the wife is hanging with a friend, so she’ll be able to open the door when she gets back, but I was planning to go get a pizza
I forgot my key on the hole and locked the door when I got in. Now I can’t open the door.
I’m not concerned, the wife is hanging with a friend, so she’ll be able to open the door when she gets back, but I was planning to go get a pizza
For those asking about the lock.
So like I said, I forgot to pull my key out the keyhole, then turned the knob on instinct, tried to open it, failed, tried to unlock it, failed.
I’m as confused as you are
Based on where you live that’s illegal. And the fire marshal will have some choice words for whoever approved that. And then force them to change the locks.
With that in mind you very well could call the fire department to come let you out. That will certainly help draw attention to it.
But then you need to fix the door AND the lock.
Yeah, the key being in the outside shouldn’t keep it from being unlocked from the inside unless there is a defect. Turning that paddle should just rotate the key.
If you have a door with a keyhole on both sides, and you leave the key in one side, you then can’t lock it from the other (the key won’t go in).
So I’d expect your door to either not lock from the inside or (more likely given it’s just a turn handle), both lock and unlock.
Locking and not unlocking is very strange.
The Yale locks that used to be very common here had the opposite problem - if you left your key behind you could quite easily lock yourself out, as the door would lock on closing.
Electronic locks here. Checking for the badge/card or the fob is something I learned when moving from a more- to less-secure area at work when there was more secret-squirrel stuff than now (more ‘private-possum’ than ‘secret-squirrel’ at this place), and that reflexive check at home when leaving the apartment has saved my bacon.
(And yes, if I activate the elevator keypad I can only go to my own floor and to common-area floors with it. It’s pretty cool)
Do you need to wiggle the key usually, to get the lock to turn? Maybe the key is so worn, that one of the shear pins is trapped. I’m not sure this makes sense, I just watch The Lock Picking Lawyer sometimes.
Well I for one don’t know a gawd damn thing.
But this is a fresh building and the lock is still smooth as butter. I put enough strength into it to fear snapping something somewhere (either the lock or me).
My wife just needed to turn the key like normal to get in. Nothing stuck.
I would definitely bring this up with the landlord; those locks need to be replaced if you can potentially trap yourself inside (or have someone else trap you inside). This is a pretty serious fire hazard for every tenant that has the same door locks.
If the landlord isn’t interested in it, talk to the local Fire Marshall.
Just to add, just because it’s new doesn’t mean it can’t be faulty or working incorrectly. It’s your choice if it doesn’t bother ya, but it does seem like a big “what if” type of situation to me especially if it’s an apartment complex.