Locks for four garden sheds

Four sheds! That is some boasting.

I have one of these, combination is settable.

Go modern get four of these bluetooth ones only ~£90 each !

We have these:

You can get sets of padlocks that have the same key.

Bill

No suggestions for padlocks, but remember that if your shed is made of wooden boarding, the scrotes can just lever off a few panels and gain access that way, regardless of how well padlocked the door is. The moral is never keep anything valuable in your shed(s).

I got mine from Ironmongery Direct. Quite a range.

I also have shed alarms. Not cheap, but look for a company called UltraSecure. They use 3G to ring the house phones (in our case with a special cadence) and tell us which shed is under attack.

Look for padlocks "Keyed Alike". Screwfix used to have sets of 6, I use these on yard gate, tack room, hay store, and tool store at our horse yard. They also came with two or three keys each, so plenty of spares to share if required.

Whether you want same or different key/code depends on the value of contents plus risk of compromise.

It was also handy to know the magic term when I had to replace one of the two locks on my car "top box". Much less hassle than fumbling with multiple keys.

snipped-for-privacy@cad-plan.co.uk formulated the question :

Something like the Arrone AR/D-195MC range?

You can set the code to suit yourself and all the same.

Or design a powered latch release, released by buttons, located in a secure location.

Careful with that Gallium ...

Well in the past you used to be able to get packs of padlocks with the same keys. I recall seeing them arrive in the factory where I worked. Chubb comes to mind, but I guess others do it as well. Brian

One does have to be a little careful with some combination locks, as a gentle pull can allow one to feel the tiny click inside as each lever operates. Brian

Are these garden sheds and how sturdy are they? If a thief wants to get into a shed they will just kick in a panel rather than mess around with the door and a lock. Alternatively they will just bring a large wreaking bar. It is a mistake to assume that a thief cares about looking after the state of your property.

My elderly mother currently requires someone to come around morning and evening to help with washing and dressing (she had a fall and broke here arm and shoulder). The NHS provide an upto 6 week "free" rehabilitation service which is followed up with a means tested social services provision. She has a key safe by the front door.

Both the NHS and social services supervisors who visited to explain the services strongly recommended not using your birth year as the a combination that is easy to remember. Too many people have 19xx as a four digit combination.

They also indicated that too may people only scramble the last digit on the rotary type combination locks and all their staff are told to scramble all digits when replacing a key.

From experience, on some of the press key locks it doesn't matter which order you press the 4 keys so if your code is 19xy pressing x1y9 will also gain entry. If a press key lock is used a lot the keys with most grime on them or the keys with the digits that are most worm will be the code!

I remember bike locks circa the 1970s suffering this problem.

Modern combination locks seem much less open to this type of crack. I tried on the two I have and could not feel anything significant.

My shed has a Squire combination bolt and I can't feel the 'tightest' cylinder. Actually, this might be because my fingers and thumbs are too big to rotate one cylinder when I grip hard. Next door's back gate had a cheap bike lock and that was easy - had to take it off when a cylider got out of synch. Soon put that right - it was easy to hold the notch and turn the outer ring.

And the second moral is to be careful when increasing the level of security. Installing a single fancy high security lock may have a scrote thinking "If it requires that much protection, there must be something worth stealing in there".

Are these sheds off grid? If so how are they powered?

Yep, quite a lot of the mechanical ones. Only serves to confuse the users:

Jim: Oy, Fred what's the code for the door? Fred: 4528. Jim: You sure, I thought it was 8254? Les: You're both wrong. It's 2854.

Or the shiny buttons. Electronic ones have fixed number order but I have seen, once, an electronic keypad that moved the numbers about the buttons for each code entry sequence.