Locksmith in Nepean, from Bells Corners to Centrepointe

Nepean Township dates from 1792, and the City of Nepean was incorporated on November 24, 1978. Its town hall moved from Westboro to Bells Corners in 1966 and later to Ben Franklin Place in Centrepointe, and Nepean joined the amalgamated City of Ottawa in 2001.

Suburban Nepean took shape in the 1950s and 1960s, as farmland gave way to houses around what became Centrepointe and, later, out to Barrhaven in the south. Lynwood Village in Bells Corners went up in the late fifties and early sixties, and Westcliffe Estates followed from 1969.

This page is about Nepean's established neighbourhoods: Bells Corners, Centrepointe, Craig Henry, Crestview, Meadowlands, Manordale, Bayshore, Parkwood Hills and their neighbours. Their houses are mostly fifty to seventy years old, with plenty of rentals and small apartment buildings mixed in, which shapes the work a Nepean locksmith does more than anything else. For the newer suburb to the south, see locksmith in Barrhaven.

Algonquin College's Woodroffe campus brings thousands of students to Nepean, and many of them rent rooms, basement apartments and shared houses nearby. Leases are often short, roommates change partway through the year, and keys are copied and handed on in ways no landlord ever sees.

For landlords, the practical answer is to rekey at every change of tenant and to keep a simple record of how many keys were handed out. Restricted keys, which cannot be copied without authorization, are worth considering for a house with several rooms let separately. For tenants, the rule under Ontario's Residential Tenancies Act is that you may not change the locks without the landlord's consent, so ask before you call a locksmith.

Rooms let separately can each have their own lock, keyed so that the landlord's key opens every room and each tenant's key opens only their own room and the front door. A Nepean locksmith can set that up as a small master key system.

You get a price on the phone after describing the job, and it is confirmed before work starts. With older houses that matters, because a lock that seems simple can turn out to be a discontinued model or a mortise lock that takes longer.

For landlords, rekeying is priced per cylinder, so a unit with one door and a mailbox is quick, and a house with several entrances takes longer. Business premises are quoted after a look at the doors and the hardware.

Night and weekend calls cost more than booked visits. If a door can be safely secured until morning, you will be told.