It is impossible to imagine any apartment or house without entrance and interior doors. In recent times, all structures were made mainly of wood. Modern manufacturers offer doors based on metal or plastic. The use of such materials made it possible to significantly reduce the weight of the structure, as well as increase its strength.
Even the highest quality installation of doorways requires subsequent adjustment of the main bearing units. The more severe operating conditions of doors lead over time to the appearance of various malfunctions that must be eliminated by adjusting. Therefore, a prudent owner should know step-by-step instructions describing the adjustment of door hinges. You can do the setting yourself, based on the advice of the masters.
Signs that indicate the need for adjustment
Any, even the highest quality and well-installed door eventually needs to be adjusted. The occurrence of the following faults indicatesthat 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;
- fitting the door to the frame becomes loose;
- difficulty moving the door, which sometimes makes it impossible to close it;
- the presence of drafts, which is more typical for the front door.
When faced with any of these failures, it is necessary to determine the cause of the defect, and proceed to adjust the doors.
Easy ways to identify a defect
There are two simple ways to diagnose a doorway malfunction:
- After closing the door, draw a line around the entire perimeter of the door frame with a simple pencil. The lack of parallelism between 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 door hinge adjustments need to be made.
- The tightness of the door can be checked using 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, then the door fits snugly and adjustment is not required. Otherwise, you need to perform adjustment operations.
Before starting work, make sure that the service warranty period has expired. Otherwise, the company that installed the door structure is obliged to perform adjustment operations for free.
Causes of malfunctions
Most products in today's world are made in China. But Chinese-assembled door structures cannot be called poor quality, as there are many different reasons for door failure.
The main reasons include:
- the underlying cause of the defect is the large weight of the door leaf;
- marriage in the material or defect in the manufacture of the structure;
- mechanical wear of hinges during operation;
- violation of the technological process of installing the doorway.
Complex of operations performed during adjustment
Troubleshooting a door structure is not limited to adjusting door hinges. Here we need an integrated approach, which includes actions aimed at preventing breakdowns.
Such operations include:
- cleaning all the main rubbing elements of the doorway from dirt and dust;
- greasing and adjusting hinges;
- monitoring the wear of the gasket, and if necessary replacing it;
- adjustment and lubrication of the lock;
- adjusting the closing of the door leaf;
- press fittings if they are loose.
All these operations are easy to do yourself.
Types of door hinges
There is a wide variety of door hinge models. You can classify them according to various criteria.
According to the place of application:
- hinges for doors installed at the entrance to the dwelling, which are distinguished by theirmassiveness, since the canvas of this design is heavy;
- lighter hinges used for interior doors that have a nice decorative look.
By design, loops are divided into the following types:
- overhead hinges are simply installed on the door leaf and screwed on with screws, in this case no additional preparation of parts of the structure is made;
- mortise-type hinges are recessed into the canvas and the door frame, so for their installation it is necessary to pre-cut special grooves;
- screwed hinges are used on doors with a quarter, but their use on fragile materials is not possible;
- corner hinges, also used on designs with a quarter, and provide a tighter abutment of the web;
- hidden-looking hinges are invisible on closed doors, but for their installation you have to make a rather deep cut;
- bilateral hinges are used in special rooms where there is a need to open doors in both directions.
Adjusting front doors
The design of doors for entering a dwelling is most often metal or metal-plastic. Therefore, the canvas has a fairly large weight, which causes a large load on the fastening system.
Hidden or overhead hinges are widely used for high-quality work of the front door. Concealed hinges are made from a special high-strength alloy of zinc, aluminium, magnesium and copper. This alloy hascalled tsamak, and is characterized by increased wear resistance and reliability.
Step-by-step instructions for adjusting loops
The hidden door hinges are adjusted repeatedly until the squeak disappears.
This process is carried out as follows:
- Loosen the hinges with a socket wrench starting from the middle.
- After that, pull the door leaf to the box, and tighten the nut from the edge.
- Then, with gentle movements, return the loops to their place, fixing them in this position.
- The control of the performed adjustment is carried out by repeatedly closing and opening the door.
If the hinges are worn out, it is very difficult to achieve the desired result with such actions, so the hinges will have to be replaced.
The process of adjusting the overlay type hinges
Fixed loops are by far the most common in use. Depending on the design, the door hinges of the entrance doors can be adjusted in several planes.
You can eliminate the skew of the metal door leaf in the vertical plane with a special purpose adjusting screw. Skew is eliminated if its value is less than 5 mm.
To raise or lower the canvas, under the lower end there is another adjusting element, by rotating which the canvas rises within five millimeters or falls by two millimeters. All those adjustment screwsare located under the trim strips, which must be removed before adjustment.
If you need to adjust about 5 mm, you will have to remove the canvas and adjust the hinges to the desired position.
Setting the interior door hinges
The owners of modern apartments most often install interior doors made of plastic. This material is much lighter than metal or wood. Therefore, adjusting the door hinges of plastic doors is easy to do on your own. Durability, reliability and attractive appearance of plastic structures determine their wide application in any premises.
Despite the light weight of the canvas, the problems inherent in metal doors also occur in plastic structures. The standard adjustment of door hinges of interior doors includes three types:
- Adjustment in the vertical plane is made in case of web friction on the box (most often from below). To raise or lower the door, you need to find the adjusting element located at the end of the hinge from below. Turning it clockwise with a hex wrench, you can raise the door leaf by five millimeters. In the opposite direction - lower.
- Sag in the blade can be corrected by adjusting it horizontally. To do this, by rotating a long screw located perpendicular to the hinge axis, the skew is eliminated. In order for the canvas to move evenly, you need to press the lower hinge, and we achieve the correct position of the door with the middle and upper hinges.
- Adjustment of the clamping force of the door is carried out by a special locking pin. This element has a notch indicating the current state of the clamp. The rotation of the trunnion with a notch from the frame corresponds to an increase in pressure. Reverse direction reduces downforce.
All adjusting elements are located under decorative overlays, which must first be removed before work. As you can see, adjusting the door hinges of interior structures is similar to adjusting metal doors.
Hidden interior door hinges
Hidden hinges are door fittings that are not visible, as they are installed inside the structure profile. And although they were developed to prevent breaking the front door, such designs for fastening interior swing doors have gained particular popularity.
Adjustment of hidden door hinges is carried out using the same technology as similar fittings for entrance doors:
- you can raise or lower the canvas using the screws located at the end of the loop;
- sagging of the web is eliminated with a special long screw located under the decorative trim, perpendicular to the hinge axis;
- door pressure is adjusted by locking pin.
It is worth noting that a properly installed and adjusted door on hidden hinges can withstand the load much longer without additional adjustment.
Modern manufacturers offer a wide variety of designs that have an aestheticappearance and are highly durable and reliable. So, Simonswerk hinges are able to withstand a load of up to fifty kilograms. In addition, a special sliding system makes it possible to very rarely adjust simonswerk door hinges.
Adjustment of furniture hinges
Furniture hinges differ from door hinges in their design. Therefore, the adjustment of door hinges on furniture has its own characteristics, although the principle of operation remains the same. Here you also need to correctly adjust the doors in height, along the plane and set the appropriate vertical gap.
It is worth noting that before starting the adjustment operations, it is necessary to install or hang the cabinets according to the level, since the skew of the main body greatly complicates the adjustment of the hinges.
The furniture hinges have two Phillips-slotted adjustment screws, so it's best to do all operations with a Phillips screwdriver. The adjusting screw closest to the edge can turn the door left or right. To adjust, you must first set the same position of the bolts, then, with the door closed, evaluate its location relative to the furniture body. After it is necessary to rotate the screws to achieve the correct placement of the blade.
The height of the door is adjusted with screws that are screwed into the side of the cabinet. These screws are threaded through a slotted hole that allows the height of the door to be adjusted.
Adjust cabinet door hingesplane is made by the second adjusting screw. To do this, loosen the screw on the opposite side of the springy edge. We attract the door to ourselves, and clamp the screw, as it performs the function of fastening. 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. It can be done by any apartment owner. The main thing is to understand the correct location of the door in space, and which adjusting screws can change this position.
