Safe Lock Batteries

Digital safe locks usually take batteries with only rare exceptions running an external power supply. When the lock does, the manufacturers recommend top of the line alkaline types. This typically means Duracell Coppertop or Eveready Energizer.* There are a few other brand name quality batteries which may be used safely. You will notice the good batteries have best before dates which are about 5 years away from your purchase date. If the batteries does NOT have an expiry date, do not buy it.

There are three good reasons to buy the best batteries you can.

• Lifetime. The best batteries last the longest. You can save a few dollars by going with lesser batteries in return for staff changing them more often. It sounds like a good bargain as long as you know the full risk. Staff who do not know how to do this can get 'vigorous' and rip the keypad off the wire connecting it to the safe forcing an emergency replacement. We also see people who pull off the keypad and return it with one full turn in the cable each time and sooner or later the poor thing looks like a telephone cord without the spring. Again, stressed wires break and then the pad must be replaces.


• Dead at time of install. We see this as a call when the client has replaced the batteries and the safe will still not open or not consistently. Upon arrival, I test each with a multimeter and sometimes find dead 'new' batteries. This can happen with any brand but the big names have a better track record.


• Leakage. Batteries which have discharged leak but also if a battery starts to leak it quickly discharges. Most safe locks take 2 9V batteries and only ONE is needed to operate the lock. If one starts to leak, the first you MAY know there is a problem is when the junk from the dead cell hits the circuit board and shorts it. While rare, this problem forces keypad replacement. (It is also a risk and concern for any safe lock which is seldom used or in storage.)

Lastly, a safe lock has a method to tell you the batteries are low. Sometimes these do not kick in and the lock just dies. Other times staff have ignored it for so long it is now considered the standard operation of the lock. Additionally, sometimes the environment is so noisy nobody could really hear the beeps of the lock even given he or she knows what the signal is for low batteries. This gives us a good rule: If the safe lock is not working right, replace the batteries.

* All trade names are held by their respective companies.

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Laux Myth ... Thoughts From a Locksmith
By MartinB, Found @ http://lauxmyth.blogspot.com/