Card-Key Locks Causing Electrocution? How Commercial Locksmith Services Can Help
Posted on: 16 January 2017
Freak accidents and fatalities caused by card-key locks are rare, but if your hotel seems to have more than one incident, you had better hire commercial locksmith services. A commercial locksmith can get to the bottom of why a certain door your hotel seems to be cursed. Here are some following possible causes and how the locksmith will fix this issue.
Why Card Keys Cannot and Do Not Kill Regularly
While card-key locks operate electronically, they typically do not produce the amount of electricity necessary to kill a human being. They cannot even kill a small child who uses the card key to get in the room ahead of a parent. They operate on a very low voltage, and that voltage is only in play long enough for the card key to register and open the door. Yet, there are several deaths and injuries reported from these incidents.
What Other Factors in Play Are
In the reported deaths and injuries involving card keys and hotel rooms, people were soaking wet after coming from the pool or from outside. That, combined with other bizarre circumstances, led to the reported incidents. Being wet and using a card key is still not enough to get guests electrocuted, but it can play a role. Other things the commercial locksmith will look for are frayed or loose wires from air conditioners, TVs, and lights in the rooms in which the victims were staying.
In the frayed, cut, or live-wire situations, when people are close enough to the door, electricity can travel the short distance to the lock. As the guests (who are now wet) attempt to enter the room, they complete the electrical circuit from the wiring problem, the card-key ignition, and the floor, becoming a conduit for the electricity that is trying to escape. The locksmith carefully searches these rooms (after turning the power off) to find something that would fit with this pattern.
What the Locksmith Does
Since the problem is not actually with the card key or the lock, the locksmith will prop the door open and have you call an electrician. In the meantime, the locksmith can check the lock to make sure that the recent surge in electricity has not damaged the lock itself. If there is any damage to the lock, it can be replaced. Then the electrician needs to fix the problems the locksmith discovered. Once the problems are all fixed, the power to that room or floor of your hotel can be turned back on, and you should not encounter any more freak accidents or fatalities.
Talk to a company such as ASAP Lock Service to learn more.
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