South San Francisco · San Mateo County
The one city here with its own lock code.
South San Francisco writes a minimum security standard into its municipal code, and it is stricter than California's. Most locksmiths working this city have never read it.
Chapter 15.48, and what it actually requires
California's rental deadbolt rule, Civil Code 1941.3, asks for a throw of thirteen-sixteenths of an inch. South San Francisco Municipal Code chapter 15.48 asks for one inch, and it does not stop there.
- Exterior doors and the garage-to-house door "shall be of solid core with a minimum thickness of one and three-fourths inches".
- Those doors need "deadbolt locks with a one-inch minimum throw" in addition to a dead latch, not instead of one.
- Strike plates go on with two and a half inch screws into solid backing, and the deadbolt strike plate is 16 gauge steel, bronze or brass at the least.
- Outswinging doors need non-removable hinge pins. Inswinging doors need rabbeted jambs.
- The main entry door needs a 180 degree viewer.
- Louvered glass windows are prohibited outright.
This is not advisory. Section 15.48.040 pulls an existing building into compliance once alterations in any twelve month period pass $5,000, and pulls the whole structure in once residential work passes 50 percent of value or floor area.
What that means for you in practice: if you are having work done in South San Francisco and the hardware is being touched anyway, the code has an opinion about what goes back on. We would rather tell you that before we fit something than after an inspector does.
South San Francisco Municipal Code ch. 15.48, read from the City's own code host. Quoted fragments are exact.
Two keying rules written into the code
Your tract is not allowed to share a key
Section 15.48.060(d) says that on owner occupancy, each unit in a tract built under the same general plan must have locks whose combinations are "interchange free from locks used in all other separate dwellings". Section 15.48.050(g) says the same for apartments. So in South San Francisco, a builder keying forty houses alike is not a shortcut, it is a code violation.
But the laundry room is supposed to open on your unit key
Section 15.48.050 requires laundry room doors to stay locked and to use locks that unit keys can open, and requires common area and garage doors to let people out without a key while needing one to get in, self-closing. Read together, the code wants a two level scheme: nobody shares a door key with a neighbor, everybody shares the laundry.
That is a master key system, properly designed. It is also the thing most often done badly, because whoever installed it keyed the laundry to every unit and then nobody could change one unit without changing the lot.
SSFMC §§15.48.050 and 15.48.060.
A 1950s city, not an old-door city
The City's own Housing Element puts the 1950s as the single biggest decade of building at 27.2 percent of the stock, and about 45 percent of units before 1960, out of 22,326 homes. Only 7.4 percent predates 1940.
Put that next to San Francisco, where 47 percent predates 1940, and you have a six fold difference eight miles apart. South San Francisco is a bored cylindrical lockset city. San Francisco is a mortise lock city. A locksmith who works one and assumes the other turns up with the wrong parts.
59 percent of the housing is detached single family, above the Bay Area's 52, with 13 percent attached and 21 percent in buildings of five units or more. The work splits accordingly: mostly front doors and garages, and then a separate world of intercoms, common doors and mailbox banks in the larger buildings.
South San Francisco 5th and 6th cycle Housing Elements, table 3.4-2 and the 2020 housing type figures.
Where the burglaries actually happen
South San Francisco police have reported that over 63 percent of cases filed as residential burglary involved places that are not somebody's home: hotel rooms, parking garages, mailrooms and bicycle storage.
That is a useful number because it points at the doors people stop thinking about. A mailroom lock, a bike room lock and a parking garage door are common area hardware, and in a building of any size they are usually the oldest and least maintained locks on the property.
If you manage a building here, those are the three to look at first, and section 15.48.050 already tells you what they are supposed to be.
South San Francisco Police Department reporting.
Where we go in South San Francisco
Downtown and the Grand Avenue area, Irish Town, Linden, Westborough, Buri Buri and Serra Highlands, Sunshine Gardens, Winston Manor, Avalon and Brentwood, Mayfair Village and Francisco Terrace, Paradise Valley, Parkway, Peck's Lots, Southwood, the Town of Baden, Sign Hill, Oyster Point and the whole of East of 101.
The BART station at 1333 Mission Road and the Caltrain station are both ordinary reference points if you are stuck somewhere without an address.
In an emergency, 20 to 30 minutes.
Questions people ask here
A contractor is redoing my house. Does the lock code apply to me?
If the alterations pass $5,000 in a twelve month period, section 15.48.040 says the new work has to meet the chapter. Past 50 percent of value or floor area, the whole structure does. Worth knowing before the hardware gets ordered.
My apartment building keyed every unit the same. Is that allowed?
Section 15.48.050(g) says locks in each unit of a development built under one plan have to be keyed differently from the others. If yours are not, that is the provision to show the manager.
Can you open the mailroom or the bike room?
With the building's authorization, yes. Those are common area doors and they belong to the property, not to a tenant. Get the manager on the phone while we are on the way.
Is a one inch throw actually different from thirteen-sixteenths?
Three sixteenths of an inch more bolt in the frame. It sounds like nothing and it is the difference between a bolt that stays in a spread jamb and one that does not. We fit the one inch here either way.
Need a locksmith in South San Francisco now?
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