A couple of years ago, just before the summer holiday season kicked off, 2 of us spent 5 long days upgrading a total of 397 manual lever mortice sashlocks and basic euro cylinders fitted to static holiday caravans to Hi Tech electronic locking.
Riviera Towans Holiday Caravan site in Hayle overlooks the sea and had purchased the electronic locks as a package from Salto but with no option to have them fitted. They had purchased 2 different versions. One was a straight forward euro cylinder swap. Remove the standard key option and fit a new electronic cylinder which was fairly straight forward.
The second option required more work to convert as we had to remove all the old lever handle sets and lockcases and then cut into the doors and frames and undertake alterations to allow the new systems to be fitted. Not all the caravans were the same so it was not a case of do one and learn then the other 396 were easy as they had about 6 different vans on site and each version required slightly different work which made the work time consuming. I was fortunate to be able to do a minimum of 4 hours minimum every day and still allow time for emergencies to be covered.
Because it was such a big job, we did a test run prior to the actual start of the fitting to find any potential issues but likely although it was slow, the conversion went fairly well. Saying that, the caravan we chose turned out to be one of the easier options.
Once all the locks were fitted and configured, they could all talk to each other and all the information collected such as entry/exit times, who enter such as guests, cleaners or maintenance depending on the card or fob used and more. Once the job was finished and tested, a couple of adjustments were required but the site was up and running fully within 7 days and they were provided with a service package for the following 24 months of which we attended just 3 times.
These locks can be fitted to any door and are generally used on hotels and large rigid building but this proves that any door can be fitted with a 21st century solution.
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