These are the questions Flushing owners, tenants and shopkeepers bring to us before a lock goes on, grouped by the kind of door: tower apartments, hardware bought abroad or online, houses, and the shops, offices and classrooms of downtown. Prices, scheduling and coverage are in the FAQ further down. Nothing on this page is legal or compliance advice; where a law or agency is involved, we say which one so you can check with it directly.
Apartments in the new towers
Our condo is on a high floor downtown and my phone shows dozens of neighbours’ Wi-Fi networks — will a Wi-Fi smart lock keep dropping off?
It can, and crowded radio is the most common reason a lock in one of Flushing’s newer buildings shows “offline” in the evening and comes back by morning. Most Wi-Fi locks and lock bridges talk only on the 2.4 GHz band — Schlage’s product page for the Encode says plainly that it “requires 2.4GHz WiFi network” — and that is the same band every neighbour’s router, many older laptops and a long list of smart plugs and cameras use. In a tower with dozens of units per floor, the lock is competing with all of them, from inside a steel door at the far end of an entry hall, usually behind a concrete wall from your router.
There are four practical fixes, and we test them in this order. First, move the radio closer: a mesh node or access point near the entry, or a plug-in lock bridge in the hall closet — August’s support guidance, for example, puts its Connect bridge within 10 to 15 feet of the lock. Second, consider a lock that uses Thread through a border router you already own; Bold’s Matter guide describes Thread as a low-power, self-healing mesh, and both Bold and Yale say a Thread lock needs a border router, such as a recent smart speaker or hub. Third, keep the lock on Bluetooth only if you never need remote access. Fourth, if the building’s management runs a wireless network in the corridors, don’t join a lock to it unless management agrees in writing.
Whatever we choose, the test is the same: a phone on mobile data, standing in the lobby, locking and unlocking the door and receiving the alert, at the time of day when the building is busiest. A lock that passes that test at 7 p.m. will pass it at 2 p.m.
Locks bought abroad or online
A relative brought back a push-pull fingerprint lock from Korea — will it fit an ordinary American front door?
Sometimes, but not on the strength of the box. Push-pull digital locks of the kind sold in Korea and China are usually mortise locks: a rectangular lock body is let into a pocket cut in the edge of the door, and large escutcheons cover both faces. A typical American keypad deadbolt is the opposite — a cylindrical latch through a round bore, with a 2-3/8 or 2-3/4 inch backset, as Allegion’s door-preparation guidance for its Schlage locks spells out. The two systems use different holes in different places.
For its Samsung mortise models, one North American distributor asks for an absolute minimum of 4.5 inches of flat space from the edge of the door to any glass, panel or moulding, a door between 1-9/16 and 3-1/8 inches thick, and at least 70 mm of clearance where a storm door closes over the main door. Panelled wood doors, doors with a glass light near the latch side and narrow storm-door gaps fail those numbers more often than not. A door that already has two round holes for an American knob and deadbolt also has to be checked to make sure the new escutcheons will cover them.
If the door passes, we cut the mortise pocket, fit the body and the trim, and test the inside handle: a push-pull lock still has to open from the inside with one plain motion, without a code. We also check what you can and can’t get help with — the manual, voice prompts and support line may be in another language, and warranty claims may have to go back to the country of purchase. If the door fails, we will say so before cutting anything, and show you a North American lock that gives the same features on the door you have.
A no-name smart lock from an online marketplace costs a fraction of a Schlage — what are we actually giving up?
Mostly things you can’t see in the listing. Established makers publish which standard their lock was tested to; Schlage, for example, lists the Encode Plus as ANSI/BHMA A156.40 Grade AAA, the residential deadbolt standard’s top grade. Many marketplace listings name no standard and no grade at all, which doesn’t prove the lock is weak but leaves you with no way to know how its bolt, cylinder and housing were tested.
The second thing is the software behind it. A smart lock is half hardware and half service: an app, a cloud account, firmware updates and someone to answer when it misbehaves. Before buying, look for a company you can name, an app with recent updates, a privacy policy that says where account data is kept, and a published way to report security problems. If you can’t find those, assume the remote features may stop working one day and choose a lock that is still a good lock without them.
Third, the mechanical basics. Check that it has a real key override or a mechanical bypass, an inside thumb-turn that works without power, a backset that matches your door, and a battery cover that a grown-up can open without tools. We are happy to install a lock you supply; we will just tell you during the walkthrough if it falls short on any of those points, before it goes on your door.
Houses north and east of downtown
After October’s armed home invasion near the Horace Harding Expressway, should we stop unlocking our door from the app for people we can’t see?
It’s a sensible rule to adopt, though it helps to be clear about what happened. QNS reported that on October 11, 2026, four masked men forced their way into a home on the Horace Harding Expressway near 150th Street at about 2:30 a.m. That was a forced entry by armed men — not a remote unlock, a guessed code or a hacked app — and no lock setting would have made the difference that night.
Where a smart lock can make you less safe is in everyday habits. Unlocking from the app because someone at the door says they are a courier, a relative’s friend or a repairman you weren’t expecting is the digital version of opening the door to a stranger. A video doorbell or door camera beside the lock means you see the face before you press the button, and temporary codes with an end time are better than remote unlocking for deliveries and trades you have scheduled. At night, there is rarely a reason to unlock remotely at all.
The physical side still matters most. On houses we fit the strike with long screws that reach the framing, check that the bolt throws its full length, and talk about an alarm with door contacts and a panic button. A smart lock does its best work by making sure the side and rear doors are actually locked every night — and by telling you, on the phone by your bed, when one isn’t.
Shops, offices and classrooms downtown
Our tutoring centre fills with children after school — can the entrance keep strangers out without trapping the kids inside?
Yes, as long as the locking only ever applies to people coming in. Tutoring and test-prep centres are a fixture of downtown Flushing — a 2017 New York Times article on test-prep centres opens on Main Street — and many sit on upper floors behind a shared street door. The usual arrangement is a keypad or fob reader on the outside for staff and an intercom with a camera so the front desk can buzz in parents and visitors. On the inside, the door opens with a lever or a push bar, every time, without a code.
What most centres actually want is to know when a child leaves, and that is a job for an alert, not a lock. A door contact or an exit chime that sounds at the front desk whenever the door opens lets staff look up and see who is going, without ever making the door hard to open. Commentary on the model codes is clear that electrified locks must remain readily openable from the egress side, and delayed-egress or locked-exit arrangements are special locking systems that need approvals — not something to improvise for a classroom.
We also set credentials up so they can be taken away quickly. Part-time teachers get their own codes or fobs, which come off the system the day they finish; parents are buzzed in rather than given codes that spread; and the owner gets the log of who opened the door and when, which helps if there is ever a question about a pickup.
We prepare tax returns in an office above Main Street — does a keypad with an audit log help with the IRS’s data-security expectations?
It can be part of the answer, but the IRS doesn’t name door hardware. Publication 4557, Safeguarding Taxpayer Data, says that under the FTC Safeguards Rule, tax return preparers “must create and enact security plans to protect client data,” and among its basic steps it tells preparers to “limit access to taxpayer data to individuals who need to know” and to “implement a clean desk policy.” It points to Publication 5708 for building a written information security plan.
A keypad or fob lock with individual credentials gives you something concrete to put in that plan’s physical-security section: a list of who can open the office and the file room, a log of when they did, and a way to remove a seasonal preparer’s access the day the season ends. A shared four-digit code that every employee since 2019 knows gives you none of that. Where client files are kept on paper, a separate lock on the file room or cabinet room, with a shorter list of users, is worth more than a better lock on the front door.
We install the hardware and set up the user list and schedules; your accountant, your IT provider or your compliance adviser should decide what the written plan says. If you also want cameras or alarm contacts in the office, they can go in on the same visit.
Our jewellery shop wants a buzz-in vestibule where the inner door won’t open until the outer one closes — is that allowed?
Interlocked doors — often called a mantrap or sally-port — are used in jewellery stores, pharmacies and cash businesses, and they can be done legally, but they are not a lock purchase. A Locksmith Ledger article on mantraps puts the core rule plainly: “you can’t trap someone in a mantrap.” Fire codes require an emergency exit path out of every occupied room, and if there is no other exit from the secured area, the interlock hardware has to include approved free-exiting devices that override it.
The same article notes that where a mantrap sits on the means of egress, it may have to meet the rules for special locking arrangements such as delayed egress. In New York City that is a question for your architect or expediter and the Department of Buildings and FDNY, before any hardware is ordered. Electromagnetic locks are the usual way interlocks are built, which brings fire-alarm release and power-failure behaviour into the design as well.
Many small shops on Main Street end up choosing something simpler: a single entrance door kept locked during business hours, a camera at the door, and a release button behind the counter so staff buzz in customers they can see. We can fit either, but we only wire an interlock to a design that has been approved for your space.
Our storefront is a frameless glass door with a lock in the bottom corner fitting — can it go keyless?
Yes, but not with a deadbolt from a hardware store. Tempered glass can’t be drilled after it is made, so frameless glass doors take hardware designed for the glass system. One security integrator sums up the usual options well: a magnetic lock at the header, or a patch lock or bottom-rail lock made for that glass system. Some manufacturers now make an electronic lock built into a patch fitting; Codelocks, for example, describes its CL4500 GD as a medium-duty electronic lock with a patch lock for toughened glass doors, a backlit keypad and a key override.
Each route has a catch. A bottom-rail or patch lock throws into the floor, so the floor strike has to be cut into tile, terrazzo or stone, and the door has to swing true enough to meet it every time. A header magnetic lock needs power, a way to release from inside — usually a motion sensor plus a push button — and, where the fire code calls for it, release when the alarm sounds. Pairs of glass doors with a centre post or none at all add their own problems.
At the walkthrough we identify the glass fitting manufacturer, look at the floor and the header, and check how the door is used: whether the shop is staffed whenever it is unlocked, and whether the glass door is the only way out. Then we price the option that suits it, rather than forcing the same answer on every door.
If our staff door uses fingerprints, does the city’s biometric law mean we need a sign?
Possibly, depending on who uses the reader. New York City’s Local Law 3 of 2021, in effect since July 9, 2021, applies to “commercial establishments” — retail stores, food and drink establishments and places of entertainment — that collect, retain, convert, store or share customers’ biometric identifier information, and fingerprints are named in the definition. Those businesses must post a clear sign near all customer entrances, in the form the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection prescribes, and may not sell or otherwise profit from the data.
A fingerprint reader on a back door used only by employees is not collecting customers’ data, which is what the sign requirement is about. A fingerprint reader that members, students or regular customers use is a different matter. If you aren’t sure which side your door falls on, ask your lawyer before you enrol anyone; the DCWP publishes a template sign that covered businesses can use.
Whatever the legal answer, good practice is the same: tell staff what is enrolled and why, offer a code or fob to anyone who would rather not use a fingerprint, prefer locks that keep fingerprint templates on the device rather than in the cloud, and delete a person’s prints when they leave. We set the lock up that way by default.
Most of the Flushing businesses hit in last summer’s burglary spree had a door left unlocked — what actually closes that gap during business hours?
QNS reported in August 2025 that one man was suspected of burglarising a half-dozen businesses in and around Flushing from May to August. One rear door was forced on Sanford Avenue and a medical office’s locks were manipulated, but four of the six — a restaurant on Linden Place, a home-furnishing shop on College Point Boulevard, a furniture store on Northern Boulevard and the Flushing Tower Condominium — were entered through unlocked doors.
During opening hours the front door is meant to be open; the gap is the other doors. The fixes are unglamorous: a lock on the side, rear and office doors that relocks itself a few seconds after the door closes; a closer adjusted so the door actually latches instead of resting against the frame; a door-position sensor that tells the owner’s phone when a door has been propped for more than a few minutes; and a keypad on the outside of the delivery door, so staff stop propping it in the first place.
For the front door, a scheduled unlock that follows posted hours, and relocks itself if nobody opens up on a holiday, is better than relying on whoever closes to remember. And because a lock only protects a door that is shut, we look at the cash drawer, the office and the stock room as separate doors with their own, shorter lists of who can open them.
Our restaurant’s kitchen staff have wet, floury hands all shift — will a fingerprint reader on the staff door work?
Not reliably as the only way in. eufy’s support page for its smart locks says the fingerprint sensor “may not be working properly if your hand is wet, moisty, or dirty”, and other makers say much the same; anyone who has tried to unlock a phone with damp fingers knows the problem. A kitchen door used by cooks mid-shift, with gloves on and off and hands that have just been in a sink, is about the hardest place to put one.
The answer is to make fingerprints a convenience rather than the plan. Give every staff member a keypad code or a fob as their main credential, enrol two or three fingers for those who want to use the reader, and mount it at the entrance staff use when they arrive with clean hands, not at the door between the kitchen and the yard. Choose a reader that is rated for the location and can be wiped down.
Kitchens also wear hardware out faster: grease on the keypad, heat near the line, carts that hit the door. For the back-of-house door we usually prefer a sturdy keypad with physical buttons and an electric strike in the frame, which leaves the door’s own heavy-duty lever or exit device doing the work it was built for.
Burglars broke through the front doors of pharmacies on Kissena and Parsons — does a smart lock help when the door itself gives way?
Not on that door, and it is worth being honest about it. QNS reported that on December 20, 2025, a crew forced the front door of a medical business at 42-62 Kissena Blvd. at 6 a.m. and took cash and prescription medications, then broke into the pharmacy next door, and that a pharmacy at 45-12 Parsons Blvd. was entered by breaking the front door on December 30. When a door is broken through — and many storefront doors are mostly glass — the best lock in the world is only holding the part of the door the burglar didn’t need.
What helps is layering behind the glass. An intrusion alarm with door contacts, glass-break and motion detection tells you and the monitoring centre within seconds; cameras inside and out give the police something to work with; and a security gate or grille, where the building and city rules allow one, protects the glass itself after hours. None of those is a lock, and we say so.
A smart lock earns its place on the doors inside: the pharmacy’s stock room, the office with the safe, the back room with the medications. Those doors are usually solid, and a reader or keypad with a log there — opened only by the pharmacist and the owner — narrows what an intruder can reach and tells you exactly who has been in the room.
