It is impossible to imagine any apartment or house without entrance and interior doors. In recent times, all designs were made mainly of wood. Modern manufacturers offer doors based on metal or plastic. The use of such materials has greatly reduced the weight of the structure, as well as increase its strength.
Even the highest quality installation of doorways requires subsequent adjustment of the main load-bearing nodes. Moreover, the harsh operating conditions of the doors lead over time to the appearance of various malfunctions, which must be eliminated by the adjustment method. Therefore, a zealous owner should know the step-by-step instructions for setting door hinges. Setting can be done independently, based on the advice of masters.
Signs that indicate the need for adjustment
Any, even the most high-quality and correctly installed door, over time, needs to carry out adjustment operations. The following malfunctions indicate that it is time to adjust the door hinges:
- opening and closing the door leaf is accompanied by a characteristic creak;
- the appearance of noticeable traces of friction of the door leaf on the jamb;
- the fit of the door to the box becomes loose;
- obstructed door movement, which sometimes makes it impossible to close it;
- the presence of drafts, which is characteristic to a greater extent for the front door.
Faced with any of these malfunctions, it is necessary to determine the cause of the defect, and proceed to configure the doors.
Simple defect detection methods
There are two simple ways to diagnose a malfunction in a doorway:
- Having closed the door, draw a line with a simple pencil around the entire perimeter of the door frame. The lack of parallelism of the line and the edge of the canvas clearly indicates that there are problems with the correct operation of the structure. Also, by the location of the line, you can determine which adjustments of the door hinges must be made.
- The door's tightness can be checked with an ordinary sheet of paper. To do this, we clamp a sheet of paper between the canvas and the box, if it is held around the entire perimeter, it means that the door fits snugly, and adjustment is not required. Otherwise, you need to perform tuning operations.
Before starting work, make sure that the warranty period has expired. Otherwise, the company that was involved in the installation of the door structure is obliged to perform adjustment operations for free.
Causes of malfunctions
Most products in the modern world are manufactured in China. But the door structures of the Chinese assembly cannot be called substandard, since there are many various reasons for the failure of doors.
The main reasons include:
- the underlying cause of the appearance of the defect is the large weight of the door leaf;
- defective material or defect in the manufacture of the structure;
- mechanical wear of the hinges during operation;
- violation of the technological process of installing a doorway.
A set of operations performed during adjustment
Troubleshooting a door structure is not limited to adjusting door hinges. An integrated approach is needed here, which includes actions aimed at preventing breakdowns.
These operations include:
- cleaning all the main rubbing elements of the doorway from pollution and dust;
- greasing and adjustment of loops;
- control of the wear of the gasket, and if necessary, its replacement;
- lock adjustment and lubrication;
- adjustment of the door leaf argument;
- pressure fittings if it is loose.
All these operations are easy to perform on your own.
Types of Door Hinges
There is a wide variety of door hinge models. They can be classified according to various criteria.
At the place of application:
- hinges for doors installed at the entrance to the home, which are distinguished by their massiveness, since the canvas of this design has a large weight;
- lighter hinges used for interior doors that have a beautiful decorative look.
By design, the loops are divided into the following types:
- overhead loops are simply installed on the door leaf and screwed with screws; in this case, no additional preparation of structural parts is performed;
- mortise-type hinges are recessed into the door leaf frame and box, therefore, special grooves must be cut before installation;
- screw-on hinges are used on quarter-doors, but their use on fragile materials is impossible;
- corner loops are also used on structures with a quarter, and provide a more dense junction of the canvas;
- hinges of a hidden form are invisible on closed doors, but for their installation you have to make a rather deep cut;
- double-sided hinges are used in special rooms where there is a need to open doors in both directions.
Entrance door adjustment
The design of the doors to enter the home is most often metal or metal-plastic. Therefore, the canvas has a sufficiently large weight, which causes a large load on the mounting system.
For high-quality work of an entrance door the hidden or laid on loops are widely used. Hidden loops are made of a special high-strength alloy of zinc, aluminum, magnesium and copper. This alloy is called Tsamak, and is characterized by increased wear resistance and reliability.
Step-by-step instructions for setting loops
Hidden door hinges are adjusted repeatedly until the creak disappears.
This process is carried out as follows:
- Using a socket wrench, loosen the hinge from the middle.
- After that, we tighten the door leaf to the box, and tighten the nut from the edge.
- Then, with careful movements, we return the loops to their place, fixing them in this position.
- The adjustment is monitored by repeatedly closing and opening the door.
In the case of wear of the loops, it is very difficult to achieve the desired result by such actions, so you will have to replace the loops.
The process of adjusting loops of the overhead type
Overhead loops are still the most common to use. Depending on the design, the adjustment of the door hinges of the entrance doors can be carried out in several planes.
To eliminate the skew of the metal door leaf in the vertical plane, you can use the special-purpose adjusting screw. Skew is eliminated if its value is less than 5 mm.
To raise or lower the canvas, another adjustment element is located under the lower end, rotating which the canvas rises within five millimeters or falls by two millimeters. All of these adjusting screws are located under the decorative pads that need to be removed before adjustment.
If you want to adjust about 5 mm, you will have to remove the canvas, and adjust the loops to the desired position.
Adjusting the hinges of the interior door
Owners of modern apartments most often install interior doors made of plastic. This material has a much lower weight than metal or wood. Therefore, adjusting the door hinges of plastic doors is easy to do on their own. The strength, reliability and attractive appearance of plastic structures determine their widespread use in any room.
Despite the light weight of the canvas, the problems inherent in metal doors arise in plastic structures. The standard adjustment of the door hinges of interior doors includes three types:
- Adjustment in the vertical plane is made in the event of friction of the canvas on the box (most often from the bottom). To raise or lower the door, you need to find the adjusting element located on the end of the hinge from below. Rotating it with a hex key in a clockwise direction, you can raise the door leaf by five millimeters. In the opposite direction, lower it.
- Sagging web can be eliminated by adjusting in a horizontal plane. To do this, the rotation of the long screw located perpendicular to the axis of the loop eliminates the skew. In order for the canvas to move uniformly, you need to press the lower hinge, and the middle and upper we achieve the correct position of the door.
- The door clamping force is adjusted by a special locking pin. This item has a notch indicating the current state of the clip. The rotation of the trunnion by a serif from the frame corresponds to the strengthening of the clamp. The reverse direction weakens the clamping force.
All adjusting elements are located under decorative overlays, which must be removed before work. As you can see, adjusting the door hinges of interior structures is similar to setting metal doors.
Hidden interior door hinges
Hidden hinges are door hardware that is not visible, as it is installed inside the structure profile. And although they were developed to prevent the entrance door from being hacked, such designs for fastening interior swing doors became especially popular.
The adjustment of the hidden door hinges is carried out according to the same technology as the similar accessories of the entrance doors:
- Raise or lower the canvas using screws located on the end of the loop;
- sagging of the canvas is eliminated by a special long screw located under the decorative cover, perpendicular to the axis of the loop;
- the door clamp is adjusted by a locking pin.
It is worth noting that a correctly installed and adjusted door on hidden hinges can withstand the load for much longer, without additional settings.
Modern manufacturers offer a wide variety of designs that have an aesthetic appearance and are characterized by high strength and reliability. So, Simonswerk hinges are able to withstand loads of up to fifty kilograms. In addition, a special sliding system makes it very rare to adjust the simonswerk door hinges.
Furniture hinge adjustment
Furniture hinges differ from door hinges in their construction. Therefore, the adjustment of door hinges on furniture has its own characteristics, although the principle of action remains the same. Here you also need to correctly adjust the doors in height, in the plane and set the corresponding vertical clearance.
It is worth noting that before starting the adjustment operations, it is necessary to install or hang cabinets according to the level, since the skew of the main body significantly complicates the adjustment of the hinges.
On furniture hinges there are two adjusting screws with cross grooves, so all operations are best performed with a Phillips screwdriver. The adjustment screw closest to the edge is able to rotate the door left or right. To adjust, you must first set the bolts to the same position, then with the door closed, evaluate its location relative to the furniture body. After that, it is necessary by rotation of the screws to achieve the correct placement of the canvas.
The height of the door is adjusted with screws that are screwed into the side of the cabinet. These screws are screwed through an elongated hole, allowing you to change the position of the door in height.
The adjustment of the cabinet door hinges to the plane is done by the second tuning screw. To do this, loosen the screw on the opposite side of the spring edge. We pull the door towards us, and tighten the screw, as it serves as a fastener. We control the position of the door, if we did not achieve a positive result, we repeat the adjustment again.
As you can see, adjusting the door hinges is not particularly difficult. Run it by any owner of the apartment. The main thing is to understand the correctness of the door in space, and which adjusting screws are able to change this position.