Connected Craftsman LLC
Smart Lock Installation in Downingtown, PA
A smart lock is a twenty-minute job on a door that closes properly, and an impossible job on a door that does not. In an old borough house, checking which one you have is most of the work.
Prefer to text? Feel free to include a few photos — it helps us give a faster, more accurate estimate.
The door has to close before the lock can lock
A keyed deadbolt is forgiving. You can lean on a door, lift the handle, put your shoulder into it and the bolt will go home. A motorised deadbolt cannot do any of that. It extends with a small motor, and if the bolt does not line up cleanly with the strike, the motor stalls, the lock reports a jam, and after a few days of that the batteries are flat.
In Downingtown's older borough housing, doors have settled. The frames are not square and the strike is not where it was in 1925. That is fixable — shim the hinges, move the strike, adjust the threshold — and it is an hour of work that has to happen before the smart lock, not after.
We check the door swings and latches cleanly first. If it does not, we fix that, and then fit the lock.
What the job includes
- measuring the backset and the door thickness before anything gets ordered
- checking the strike and the frame — a lock will not work right on a door that does not close right
- swapping the deadbolt, or the whole handleset where the two do not match
- codes set up, phone app working, and a spare code for whoever needs one
Measure before you buy
Two numbers decide which locks will fit your door: the backset (the distance from the edge of the door to the centre of the hole, normally 2⅜" or 2¾") and the door thickness (normally 1¾", but old doors are frequently not normal). Get either wrong and the lock does not fit, and returning a smart lock you have already registered is a nuisance.
If you tell us the door before you order, we will tell you what fits. If you have already bought one, bring it out and we will check it against the door before anything is unscrewed.
The two ends of town differ here too. A front door in the borough near the Brandywine is likely to be original, heavy, and a non-standard thickness — worth keeping, and worth an hour of adjustment first. A door on an Applecross build from 2008 onward is a standard modern slab in a square opening, and the lock usually goes straight on. It is worth knowing which one you have before you buy anything.
Rentals and handovers
If you rent a property out, the practical case for a keypad lock is not the technology, it is that you stop driving out to meet people with keys. Codes for tenants, a temporary code for a contractor that expires, and no rekeying between tenants.
If you have several properties, we will do them in one run.
Frequently asked questions
Will a smart lock fit my old door?
Often yes, but the door usually needs adjusting first so the bolt travels cleanly. We check that before recommending anything.
Do I need Wi-Fi at the door?
It depends on the lock. Some need Wi-Fi, some use Bluetooth or a hub, and some work perfectly as a keypad with no network at all. What you actually want it to do decides which.
Can I keep a physical key?
Most models keep a keyway. If yours does, we can key it to match your other doors.
Can you do a video doorbell at the same visit?
Yes, and it is worth doing together — same door, one trip.
Serving Chester County
This page covers Downingtown. See all of our smart lock installation work, or what we do across Downingtown and the rest of Chester County.