Electric Strike Installation & Repair

Start with one question: when the power goes out, do you need the door locked or unlocked? An electric strike can be fail-secure — power fails, door stays locked, key still works, exit is still free from the inside. A maglock is always fail-safe and unlocks on power loss. Strikes also keep the door working like a normal door, which building staff and tenants appreciate. Maglocks win on doors where a latch can't do its job: glass doors, badly sagged doors, gates. For a typical office suite, corridor, or back door with decent latching hardware, we usually recommend the strike; for storefront glass and problem doors, the maglock. We'll confirm on-site in minutes.

Whatever you chose on install day — that's the point. A fail-secure strike keeps the keeper locked with no power: the buzzer won't release the door, but keys work normally and people inside can always exit by turning the lever or pushing the bar, because egress never depends on the strike. A fail-safe strike releases when power drops, and is used where code demands it, like stairwell re-entry doors. If you don't know which type is on your door right now, that's worth a service visit — plenty of NYC doors have the wrong fail mode installed, and nobody finds out until an outage or an inspection.

Yes — it's one of the most common installs we do, and it's a specialty for a reason. Storefront framing is narrow-stile, thin-walled aluminum, usually running an Adams Rite-style deadlatch with a shallow backset, so it takes a strike built for that geometry and a careful cut that doesn't compromise the frame. Alignment matters even more here because storefront doors rack and sag with weather and slamming closers. We cut for the door's real closed position, wire down the frame cleanly, and the result is a glass storefront that buzzes open reliably without a magnet hanging over the header. If the frame is too far gone, we'll say so and give you the honest alternatives.

Almost never. That symptom is usually one of three things: the latch is binding against the keeper because the door or frame has shifted since install (most common — the fix is realignment, not replacement); the strike's solenoid has weakened and can't overcome door pressure; or the door closer is slamming so hard the latch preloads the keeper, which a fingertip pull while buzzing temporarily 'fixes' — a classic sign. All three are same-visit repairs. The intercom amplifier's release relay can also be the culprit, which we can isolate in minutes by testing the strike directly. Diagnosis first; we don't sell you a new system to fix an alignment problem.

A single door with sane wire access — strike cut in, wired to an existing intercom or keypad, tested under load — is typically a same-day, single-visit job. Grout-filled hollow metal frames add grinding time, and long or awkward wire runs (through finished ceilings, across a lobby) add more than the cutting ever does. A full package with a new keypad or reader and power supply is still usually one visit. We're 24/7, so for retail and restaurants we routinely do these installs before opening or after close so your entrance never sits torn open during business hours.

Yes, when it's matched correctly. A rim-type panic device takes a surface-mounted rim strike made for exit devices, and mortise-lock exit hardware pairs with a strike matched to the mortise latch. The critical detail is that the panic side never changes: pushing the bar always retracts the latch and opens the door regardless of what the strike is doing, so egress stays purely mechanical, exactly as FDNY expects. The strike only controls entry from the outside. One caveat — vertical-rod exit devices latch at the top and bottom of the door rather than into an edge strike, so those doors get electrified differently; we'll spec the right approach when we see the hardware.