Review and Giveaway: Schlage Electronic Keypad Lock
June 25, 2008 by Deb
Filed under Giveaways, Recent Reviews, household product
Have you ever fumbled for your keys, searching in the dark just to find the right one that will let you into your house? Have you ever locked yourself out of your house? Do you keep a spare key hidden somewhere outside to ensure that you won’t be able to lock yourself out, or to allow others to access your house when you’re not home? Do you keep a house key with a neighbor or friend, “just in case”?
Do you really know where all of the keys to your house are and who has access to them?
Or would you like to have a way to ensure that you could let the people who need to access your house into it while keeping everyone else out – without having to keep track of keys…
Schlage, trusted partner in home and business security for 85 years, now offers a product that can help you manage your home security much more easily than ever before!
Mom Central recently surveyed over a thousand people in their Mom community about home safety and locks, and the responses were nothing short of amazing. A few stats that came to light were:
- 80% of Mom respondents reported that stories of local crimes encourage them to rethink their current locks.
- 70% of Moms have given keys to people who are not members of the household and when asked to consider how many non-residents have keys to their homes, 86% reported feeling at least moderately concerned.
- 84% of Moms have experienced a child, babysitter, or housekeeper entering a designated “off-limits” area in the home, sometimes with serious consequences.
- Almost half (48%) of survey Moms said they would like to leave a spare key hidden outside of the house but don’t feel comfortable doing so.
- 84% of respondents reported that house members have been locked out of their home at least a couple times per year.
Courtesy of Mom Central, my family was able to try out a Schlage Electronic Keypad Lock.
What it is:
Schlage’s electronic keypad locks give you full access to your house, just by using a four-digit entry code. The locks come in several different styles to fit the needs of every homeowner. You can use the keypad deadbolt locks on your exterior doors, or the keypad entry locks for any interior door in your home or office. Various styles and finishes are also available.
The locks work very simply – a lighted keypad (numbered from 0 to 9) gives you an easy way to enter your code. Locks can hold up to 19 separate four-digit codes, and codes can be added or deleted at any time. If you aren’t comfortable programming your own codes, the locks do come preset with two user codes straight out of the box.
Here’s my take on it:
My husband is the designated ‘installer’ of things at our house. He had replaced all of the exterior knobs and locks when we bought the house, so is familiar with the mechanism of a deadbolt and how it works. Therefore, he was the one to install our sample lock.
The style that we were sent is a ‘Plymouth‘ keyless deadbolt lock, in a ‘Bright Brass’ finish to match the rest of our knobs and locks. It is intended to replace a standard deadbolt lock on an exterior door already equipped with a knob (you can also purchase the locks and knobs as sets if you want your deadbolt to exactly match the doorknob).
We have two exterior doors on our home (not including a couple of sliding glass doors on the back). Our front door already has a deadbolt above the knob, but the other door, which is located next to our garage door and accesses the garage, did not. In fact, the knob had never worked very well and the door did not latch. The idea that someone could enter our garage if he or she realized that the door could be opened at any time had caused me a great deal of worry since we moved in, and so it was an easy decision that the Schlage lock would be installed on this door.
Here’s a photo of the door, after the existing knob was removed…
Since the door was not pre-drilled for a deadbolt, we had a choice to make. Rather than drill out a new hole above the existing knob and add the deadbolt lock there, we decided to simply replace the knob with the deadbolt. And this actually works surprisingly well for us – especially since it’s a door that we don’t necessarily use on a daily basis.
Given that the job involved making sure that the new deadbolt lock would actually latch correctly, the process was a bit more intensive than it would normally be. I asked my husband what he thought of the installation and he said that it wasn’t any more difficult to install than an ordinary doorknob, and would normally take no more than the 30 minutes that the instructions suggest. However, he would recommend reading the instructions before you begin. 
– 
The lock works incredibly well. We’ve programmed a few of our own codes into it, and the process is extremely easy. There’s a 6-digit ‘pin’ number that you need in order to program the lock – it’s listed on the owner’s manual, and I’ve written it down in a few other places as well so that we don’t forget or lose it. With the ‘pin’ number, it’s just a matter of a few simple steps to add or delete codes as you need them. The lock is powered by a 9-volt battery, and does come with a pair of keys to use if you need or want to.
I’ve found it very handy to be able to just punch in a quick code and access my garage (and therefore my house), without having to deal with keys – especially in the dark. I also have taken advantage of the option to program codes in for a temporary need as well. Earlier this week we had several (ahem, 19 or so) boxes that needed to be picked up by UPS. The boxes were stacked in our garage. Rather than move all of them out onto the front porch, I simply left a note for the UPS driver asking him to call my cell phone when he arrived. When I received his call, I gave him a 4-digit lock code that I’d created just for this occasion, and he was easily able to access our garage and load the boxes onto his truck. Then I simply deleted that particular code when I got home.
The bottom line:
Home security is an important issue that every homeowner needs to address. Schlage’s electronic locks are an excellent solution that offer a secure way to control access to your home, without having to keep track of multiple copies of keys. If you think that an access code may have been inappropriately shared or compromised – you can simply delete it. I am thankful to know that our home is once again secure from unwanted entry.
Where can you find it?:
Schlage products are available at a variety of online or ‘brick-and-mortar’ home improvement or hardware retailers in the US and Canada. You can find a location near you by using the locator available on their website. The locks retail for around $100 to $150, depending on the store and location.
Would you like to try it?:
Two lucky winners will be able to try a Schlage electronic lock of their own! I have a couple of exterior deadbolt locks identical to the sample one we received (Plymouth style in Bright Brass finish) to give away.
Here are the rules:
- Enter by leaving a comment on this post and tell me your best ‘locked out’ story. Please don’t just say ‘choose me’, or your entry will be discarded.
- The contest will run until Saturday, July 5th at 11:59 pm EST. The winner will be selected through random drawing and contacted by e-mail, listed on this post and also submitted to PRIZEY.Fetch.
- Please leave a valid e-mail address or other way to contact you! If you don’t wish to leave your e-mail address, please make sure that you leave a unique name and check back with PRIZEYWinners to see if you won. If the winner hasn’t responded within 3 days, an alternate winner will be chosen by random drawing.
- If you’d like an extra entry or two, you can either subscribe to my RSS feed (click on the orange icon in the upper right sidebar), or mention this contest on your blog with a link back to this post – or both. Please leave an extra comment on this post for each of the extra entry options that you choose, letting me know – for a total of 3 comments if you do both extra entry options.
Good luck!
THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED – Thank you to everyone who entered!
The random number generator has chosen the winners:
Congratulations to BOTB and Reiza! I’ll be sending you each an e-mail shortly to work out the details so I can get the locks to you.
Re-Visiting this review (January 2010):
We’ve had this lock installed for about 1-1/2 years now and I absolutely love it. Knowing that our garage is so much more secure is wonderful peace of mind when I leave the house, and I don’t have to waste electricity (and time) to raise the whole big garage door if I just need to run back inside for something. We’ve used it to give a code to family members or friends so they can get into the house through the garage if we’re not home, and I’ve created an code that’s easy for our girls to remember, just in case I’m running late and am not home when their bus drops them off from school. It’s so nice to know that they can still get into the house and won’t ever be stuck sitting outside wondering when I’ll get home to let them in.
I have a friend who has one of these too, on their front door. She’s told me that they’ve gone from hardly ever using that door, to using it all the time, just because of having this lock and not having to dig a key out from a pocket or off a keychain at night or with hands full of stuff. Neither of us has needed to change the battery on our locks yet either, so I’m confident that the battery will literally last for years. I am planning to have my husband install a second Schlage electronic keypad lock on our front door this summer.
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It almost brings back some bad memories! When my brother and I lived together there would often be a miscommunication about who had the keys. Needless to say we would end up trying to break into our own place! This happened with the car keys too!
This just happened to me yesterday afternoon! While my daughters were napping I quietly opened the front door to go outside and check the mail since I saw the truck outside. I was distracted for a few minutes talking to the mailman, that I must’ve closed the door without thinking, just so no flies would get in and because the AC was on. Once the mailman went on his way, I went to open the door and it was locked! Oops! So I had to sit on the lawn chair for an hour (or so) until my 3 year-old woke up and went outside to look for me.
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I was a teenage babysitter (back in the day). I tucked the baby into her bed and drifted off while watching TV. The parents returned home to the locked door. They had their key, but I had also locked the chain bolt. The called to me through the door, but I was out cold and didn’t awake. They had to go to a neighbor’s house and borrow a hack saw to cut through the chain! OMG, was I ever embarrassed when they woke me up after they cut it apart!!!!! ZZZZZZ……
Back in my single days a friend dropped me off and drove away before I realized I was locked out of the house I shared with three other girls. I used my cell to call the nearest person I could think of…a guy friend who lived just a couple of miles away. He took me back to his apartment to hang out until my roommate returned the message I had left for her. While hanging out at his place his (very good looking) roommate came home, whom I’d never met. We found that we had a lot in common and ended up dating for while.
It’s funny that I am posting to this blog as I just so happened to of locked myself out of my house AGAIN yesturday. I am the worst~! I do this way to often. Not only to my house but to my car as well . Try explaining to a locksmith why you happened to lock yourself out twice in less than 18hrs. Needless to say it’s very embarrassing. I even have had a neighbor call the police because they saw someone crawling through my window. Yup you guessed it . It was me. The police had a chuckle and suggested I keep an extra key hidden which I have done. I put one for my car and my house in a magnet key box made to be tucked under my car frame but when I had yet again locked myself out of my own home yesturday it was gone. It must of fell off and is who knows where now. Keyless entry now that would solve my problems no more embarrassing lock outs.
Rhonda.M exotic1@tdstelme.net
I was staying at a friend’s home with two small children while they were on vacation. With no cell phone on me, I locked all of us out of the house. I had to wlak up and down the block, knocking on doors until I could borrow someon’e phone. Now, I have the entry # for their keypad -just in case! i would love to have one of these!
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Well one Sunday after my hubby and I had gotten us and the kids ready for church we decided to head out the door. He thought I had keys, I thought he had keys, you know the drill and we locked ourselves out. We hoped one of our neighbors was home and lluckily they were so we used their phone to find a locksmith. We waited 3 hours to get back in! Missed all of church, kids were hungry and tired. It was so not fun!
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When I was little I had strep throat and was home from school. My mom went to work but came home to check on me. One could not get the front door of our house open when there was a key in the inside door for some reason. She therefore couldn’t get the door open. She pounded and yelled but finally had to give up, go back to the office, and call me from there. (The days before cell phones.)
Way back when, from January 1987 until sometime around 1993, my hubby and I lived at my Mom and Dad’s house. Before my Grandma died we lived in a room off the back of the house. After Grandma died we lived in the downstairs apartment that had previously been Grandma’s. Because he wasn’t family and because it takes a long time to build trust with my family, hubby didn’t have a key to my parents house. It typically wasn’t an issue because we were almost always together. He didn’t even drive at that time, so whenever he came and went he was with me. One night he decided he wanted to go to the local bar for a few drinks. I was annoyed with him for one reason or another, so I went out on my own with a few friends. I came in a couple of hours later and he wasn’t home. Back then it wasn’t unheard of for him to wind up at a friends and stay out really late or even all night once in a while. After two more hours of wondering where he was and worrying I fell asleep. In the middle of the night I was awakened by the door. I made my way up the stairs to the foyer, arriving at about the same time as my parents did at the top of the stairs. It’s never good to wake them in the middle of the night. At that point it hadn’t dawned on me that hubby wasn’t home. My parents didn’t know hubby wasn’t home. Dad decided to answer the persistent person at the door. He undid the deadbolt and much to our surprise we saw two police officers and my hubby. It seems that hubby had arrived home a half hour or so before but saw the downstairs was dark. He’d tapped on our bedroom window but I hadn’t heard him. He did not want to wake up my parents or my baby brothers (toddlers at the time). So, he decided he’d climb into our apartment through the downstairs living room window. At that time a policecar happened to be doing a routine patrol of our neighborhood. One of the officers saw a man starting to climb into a window, so he called for backup and got out to apprehend the man he thought was a burglar. Hubby was surprised when the police officer pulled him down from the window by his ankles. He tried to explain that he lived there and the policeman asked why he wasn’t using his key. He told the policeman he didn’t have one. By now the second policecar arrived on the scene. They asked my hubby for id, but he didn’t have any because he didn’t have a driver’s license. He asked them to please let him finish going inside so he could get his wife who would vouch for him. They were suspicious, rightly so. They told him they were going to the door. He begged them not to do that, because he didn’t want my parents woken up and thinking badly of him. They told him it was that or jail. So they rang the bell, explained they’d found this man trying to break in and asked if we knew him. Dad said hubby lived there and all was ok. The policemen went on their way. My folks were good sports about it, although hubby was pretty miffed the police didn’t believe him. He got a key to the house not long after that.
[...] found a contest that has such a neat priz! Deb from Just A Mom’s Take On Things is giving away two Schlage Electronic Locks in a contest that ends on 07/05/08 at 11:59 est. To enter you need to leave your best “locked [...]
I blogged your contest at http://www.valmg.com/index.php/2008/locked-out/
Before we had children we just had three dogs, two Cocker Spaniels and one huge Weimeraner. One very hot summer evening my husband was gone, and it was just me and the dogs. I went out the back door to take the trash out. I closed the door, but left it unlocked. It had a dead bolt lock that had to be turned from the inside or locked with a key from the outside. Our Weimeraner couldn’t stand it when someone went outside without him. He’d jump up on the door to see out and window and bark. Well, while jumping he somehow managed to turn the dead bolt and locked me out. It was about 9 p.m., and a hot, sticky night in the city. My husband wouldn’t be home until 1 a.m. I couldn’t reach him by phone where he was. The neighbors weren’t even home to ask for help. I ended up breaking into my own house by smashing the glass out of our front door with a hammer I found in the back yard. All on a busy street with cars going by. I thought for sure someone would see me breaking in and call the police, but no one did. My husband wasn’t very happy about the broken glass in the door. We ended up having to buy a whole new door. I never went outside without my keys after that. I should could have used a keypad lock that day.
It was the dead of winter and I was seven months pregnant, when I decided I wanted ice cream! That sounds ok so far, but our freezer is in our COLD garage! Well I had just put the kids to bed, so everyone was asleep but me. Well the knob on the door is one that turns from the inside even if its locked, so when I went to get the ice cream and the door shut behind me, I
pounded on the door and yelled, but for the first time ever, it seemed that my kids went right to sleep! Long story short, I pried the door open with a gardening shovel, went inside and had a nice cup of hot cocoa! Ice cream just didn’t sound good after that!
Luckily I have never locked myself out, but I live in constant fear of doing just that! Maybe when I win this I can dial the paranoia back a bit!
Here’s my story, and it features not one, but TWO lockouts (or three, if you read to the end)
My daughter and I were out for the day…she was somewhere around 28 months old, and we lived in Georgia. It was a beautiful spring day (read: warm, but getting hotter). We’d been out most of the morning and had lunch, and were heading home around 2:00 p.m.
I had a bunch of things in my car that I needed to carry in, so I decided to leave my daughter in the car and run that stuff in first. I threw my keys on the seat and grabbed my bags…NOT INCLUDING my purse, of course. And I reached down and automatically locked the door…and closed it. I didn’t even realize the keys were in the car. I got to the house and of course didn’t have my keys, and realized belatedly that they were on the seat…in the car…along with my DAUGHTER….and the temperature was already into the high 70′s…and we had no trees, so the car was in the hot sun! No problem, I’ll call hubs on the cell phone. OOOPS…purse is on the seat….WITH THE cellphone IN IT.
AAAACK! So, I run to the neighbor’s house across the street, since I know all the other neighbors are gone to work (and he worked nights). I had to pound for a good 10 minutes before I woke the poor man up. He was nice enough about it. He let me use his phone to call my hubby…..who didn’t answer either his cell OR his work phone…darn, I forgot he had a ceremony to go to (we are military – they TURN OFF their phones at ceremonies!).
So, the man let me have his phonebook AND his cell phone. We called the police and they came out quickly (due to the fact that a child was in the car). The county sheriff came out and he called out a locksmith…but it would be about 20 minutes. The sheriff had a blanket that he placed on the back window to block the sun and heat. My daughter, bless her heart, was FANTASTIC…she thought it was all a game! The sheriff played peek a boo with her for the entire 15 minutes while I tried in vain to get ahold of my hubby (though the locksmith would probably get there quicker than my hubby could).
Finally, the locksmith arrived. He jimmied the car lock and got it open, and I RAN to get my daughter out, none the worse for her experience. The sheriff gave her a high five, shook my hand and off they all went (and I didn’t have to pay for the locksmith, either).
The next day, we were getting ready for a doctor’s appointment. I got my daughter loaded into the car, but didn’t have the house locked this time…and I ran back in to get my purse and cellphone. But OOPS…I had left the keys on the seat of the car again. NO…I did NOT lock the door…but as I hit the porch I heard the familiar “ka-chunk” of the locks engaging. WHAT?!?!?!???
This time, I was able to get the info to call out the 24 hour roadside assistance, since I at least had access to the house! AND, it was early a.m., AND it was cloudy, so the heat wasn’t an issue. There was NO WAY I was going to call the cops again. My roadside assistance came out in about 15 minutes (they said normally an hour to 2, but since there was a child locked in the car….). When the locksmith unlocked the door, he said that the locks had been damaged the day prior and they they could lock by themselves on a regular basis, so either keep spares hidden and handy, or get the locks fixed.
Honestly…locked my kid in the car twice in less than 24 hours. Had I had a) a spare key, and b) access to the house key (or these great keypads) I could have gotten my child out.
Never locked myself out but it is a fear of mine. This would help me out.
I have tried these out from Mom Central and I LOVE them so I would be entering for my BF who has a house with 3 little girls.
My best locked out story? Gosh…it’s nothing particularly interesting but I was locked out one time when I took the wrong keys…I drank a huge iced coffee and had nowhere to use the restroom on the way home. I had to wait a very painful hour (although if I was smart I would have driven to the nearest gas station or fast food place but I wasn’t thinking clearly so I called my husband and waited for him to get home).
Well, the family had just taken a late-night run to the grocery store. My husband and I were taking turns keeping an eye on our toddler by tag-teaming grocery runs. Well, at one point, one of us closed the door while outside because there were bugs flying around, trying to get in. Yeah… The door was locked, the parents were outside, and a toddler was inside, waving and laughing at us. It took a while (and a bit of cash), but we finally got the door opened for us and were reunited with our little girl. As it is, we take our keys with us everywhere…even out to grill.