By Kent · Lock Depot Staff Writer

A commercial door that has to be locked whenever nobody is thinking about it wants a storeroom-function mortise lock. A supply room, an electrical closet, an IT room, a back office that holds anything worth locking. You do not want that door depending on somebody remembering to lock it. You want it locked by default. The Yale 8800 mortise lock in storeroom function is built for exactly that door.

What storeroom function does

Storeroom is the set-it-and-forget-it function. The outside lever is always locked. You need a key to get in, every single time. The inside lever always retracts the latch, so anybody inside walks out freely, no key, no thumbturn, no thinking. And the door locks itself the instant it closes behind you. That is the whole value. Nobody has to lock a storeroom door, because it was never unlocked. On a room that holds inventory or gear, that removes the one human step that always eventually gets skipped.

Why mortise on a room like this

The 8800 is a full mortise lock, the steel case routed into the door edge, not a cylindrical lock bored through the face. On a commercial door that gets used hard, the mortise body takes the punishment a cylindrical spindle does not. It is also harder to defeat, because the lock case is buried in the door instead of exposed. For a room you are locking because the contents matter, the extra security of a mortise body is the point, not a luxury.

Handing and keying, settled up front

A mortise lock is handed, so watch which way the door swings and order the correct hand. Get it wrong and the lever throw and the latch bevel fight the door. The 8800 takes a standard mortise cylinder, so it drops into most existing key systems. If you run a master key setup, order it keyed to your system or less-cylinder so your locksmith installs your own core. Sort the keying before the order, not after the lock is on the door. Rekeying a mortise cylinder on a hung door is a job nobody enjoys twice.

Common questions

What function locks the door automatically?

Storeroom (8805). Outside always locked, key to enter, inside always free to exit, and it relocks the moment the door shuts.

Mortise or cylindrical for a storeroom?

Mortise. The steel case survives commercial abuse and resists defeat better than a bored cylindrical lock.

What finish should I order?

626 satin chrome for most interiors. 629 bright stainless for damp or coastal rooms where corrosion is a factor.

Lock Depot stocks the Yale 8800 mortise line in storeroom and other functions, the common finishes, keyed and less-cylinder, in stock. Start at the Yale hub, or read the companion piece on picking a mortise function for a high-abuse door: Which Sargent 8200 Mortise Lock for a High-Abuse School Corridor. Or call 877-365-5625 with the door hand and your keying setup.