Access Control in Palo Alto

The trouble with a key is that once it has been handed out, it cannot be taken back. A credential can be turned off on a Sunday evening from a laptop. On that difference sits everything Tall Tree Lock & Safe does under access control: a badge reader on the staff entrance of a Research Park lab, a keypad on the alley door of a California Avenue restaurant, a logging reader on the records room of an office above University Avenue, phone credentials on the lobby of an apartment building near the Caltrain station whose buzzer panel has been rewired twice and still rings the wrong unit, and the keypad and intercom on an Old Palo Alto driveway gate. One keypad on one door, or networked readers with a log; the method is the same.

The survey walks each door and writes down three things: what the door is made of, what hardware it carries now, and how far the nearest power and network points are. Those three answers choose the hardware. A wooden or hollow-metal door with a deep frame gets an electric strike. A glass-and-aluminum door whose stile is too thin for a strike gets a magnetic lock at the head. A driveway gate gets a connection to the operator it already has. The controller is sized with two spare positions for the doors you add later, and the credential is whatever your staff will actually keep on them, which is a phone more often than a card. Readers, strikes, exit sensors and cable go in together with the software. You enroll the first users at the screen with the technician, and you leave holding an administrator login in your own name. One door in every building keeps a mechanical cylinder on a restricted key, because a building with no key anywhere is a power outage away from being shut.

Access control is quoted per project; door count, controller, credential type and the state of each door move the number too far for a single figure. The quote separates each door, its hardware, the controller, the credentials and the labor, so nothing is hidden in a lump. The $89 visit is the survey and counts toward the job. After approval the quote holds; a door that turns out to need new preparation is explained and agreed as its own line before the work continues, never discovered on the invoice.

You call and describe the building: how many doors and what kind of place it is. The figure is said after the walk-through, as an itemized quote, and installation is booked when you approve. The van leaves Midtown on the booked day, and a text names the technician and the window. Every door is tested from outside with a credential and from inside against the exit sensor, and the handover covers adding, removing and scheduling users. The receipt repeats the figure, door by door.