How to choose a reliable front door

Recommendation points

• Door leaf and door frame
• Door hinges
• Manufacturers and their prices for door products

Our front door is our culture. In this publication, we will understand the culture of entrance doors. Naturally, it is advisable to divide the entrance doors into metal and wooden.

However, regardless of the material from which the front door to the house is made, it must be endowed with the following qualities:

• protective ability against the use of brute force (this requires, in turn, a significant margin of safety of the door structure);
• the ability to control access (peephole, glass, video surveillance system);
• thermal insulation and sound insulation: the door structure must resist heat loss and noise penetration;
• ability to resist intelligent burglary: the door design must be carefully considered. Also, the door must be endowed with a complex system of locks. Door locks are complicated enough.

The front door, in addition, should not be deprived of aesthetics – it should look good, please the eye. It is not for nothing that Americans have a proverb: “The front door is a smile at home.”.

Door leaf and door frame

Let’s study the above list in more detail. So, the strength of the door is measured by the material from which it is made. As a rule, these are wood, steel, combinations of wood with fiberboard, plywood, chipboard. During the Soviet era, steel entrance doors caused shock and excessive suspicion among neighbors: they say, they put a door such as in a bank vault. This means that the neighbor has a lot of money and he is afraid that he will be robbed. Or they are doing something anti-popular outside the door. With a steel door, you dramatically increased your chances of attracting the then-small “gentlemen of fortune.” For this reason, people were in no hurry to install metal doors..

Now everything is different. Many people want to install a powerful, solid steel door. Accordingly, the market for the production and sale of such doors is far from poor. It doesn’t make much sense to talk about doors made of wood. Unfortunately, these doors do not meet the latest security requirements for front doors. Therefore, we will consider the design of a steel door:

• Back and front sheet of steel. For a high-quality steel door, the front sheet is solid: without welded joints. If a sheet is welded from 2 or more sheets, it means that the welded joints will crack from a series of blows with a sledgehammer and it will be very easy to bend the steel sheets through the scrap.
• The door frame is the part of the door frame that closes the gap between the door and the doorway into which the door frame was inserted. If there are no platbands, and immediately in front of the front door there will be enough space in which two people can unfold a 1.5-meter crowbar, then, in this case, your door is turned right out with the box.
• Rebates are protruding sections of the front sheet that close the gap between the door frame and the door when the door is closed. The porch will prevent you from using a crowbar or crowbar to damage the door. For high-quality doors, the porch is also present on the door frame.

A significant parameter is the thickness of the sheets from which the door is made. The composition of the steel is also important. Imported doors are made from 1-1.5 mm alloy steel sheets. When hit with a sledgehammer, the door crumples, but does not break. Domestic manufacturers produce doors as best they can, and from what they can. There are also doors where the thickness of the sheets reaches 3-4 millimeters, despite the fact that it is hardened steel: a sledgehammer bounces from a hit on this door, the drills burn, the grinder’s discs melt. The disadvantage of such doors is their enormous weight. The door rests on levers (not on hinges!), Which are fixed on a beam that rotates on 2 bearing units. But such doors are exclusive. Firstly, they are designed for summer cottages, country houses, private cottages where the owners do not live permanently or are absent for a long time. If you, from time to time, live in a similar house, then, in that case, you can think of such a door. On average, an entrance door of this class will cost you $ 1500-2000. Several companies produce such doors.

For example, you can buy doors from the Russian company “Monolit”.

And if it so happens that your place of residence is an apartment, then this door will be too big. For thieves will not wield welding, grinder, electric drill, and even more so a sledgehammer in a multi-storey residential building. Most likely, ordinary scrap will be used. For him, 3-4mm armor is overkill. You can protect yourself from scrap with simpler analogs..

The inside of the steel door is not empty. It has a set of sections and specialized struts that increase the strength of the structure. In expensive doors, in addition to internal stiffeners, a sheet of steel is inserted for greater protection. The result is such a structure: first comes the outer steel sheet, then the spacers, then the auxiliary steel sheet, then again the spacers and, accordingly, the inner steel sheet. It also happens that manufacturers save money – they put only one additional sheet of steel (without an internal reinforcement system). Of course, this is bad. Inside there is also a sound-proof material: mineral wool, foam rubber, polystyrene, paper, sawdust, wood blocks. In general, the internal composition is varied and depends on the specific manufacturer..

It will not be superfluous to border the perimeter of the entrance door with a rubber gasket. She will not let unpleasant odors pass into the apartment. This is especially true for those cases when your neighbor is a fan of blowing haze right on the site..

The most important structural element of a door is the door frame. 73% of all power loads fall on it. Based on this, the box should be strong, well attached. Therefore, we recommend that you trust the installation of the main door to conscientious people who know a lot about this and understand such issues well..

It is also important where the door will open. Almost all steel entrance doors open outside, not inside the apartment. Therefore, if an old wooden door opens into the interior of an apartment, then a new steel door may press the door of a neighbor who may not like it. The most offensive thing in this situation is that the law will be on the side of the neighbor based on the rules of fire safety measures established by the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Russian Federation. So, tenants are not entitled to change the direction of opening doors. Undoubtedly, no one has seen such rules. Therefore, we will provide an excerpt.

Order of the Ministry of Emergencies of the Russian Federation No. 313 on the approval of fire safety rules (PPB 01-03)

It is forbidden to install additional doors in houses, structures of organizations (with the exception of individual residential buildings) or change the direction of opening doors (in deviation from the project) from apartments to a corridor common for several apartments (that is, to the landing of the staircase) in the event that it prevents the free evacuation of people or worsens the conditions for the evacuation of neighboring apartments.

And if it so happens that your neighbor turns out to be a sniffed out, cunning bore, then he will simply snitch on you. As a result, the Emergencies Ministry will arrive, pull out the door. Then a fine will be slapped. Against the background of such not very welcoming prospects, it is much better to inform the neighbor, and also to appease something.

Door hinges

It is also a very important component of doors. After all, they are very easily cut off along the welded joint with a grinder or knocked off with a sledgehammer. And, if there is no platband on the door, then the door is very easy to pick with a crowbar. In order to prevent this variant of events, specialized anti-removable pins are installed in the wall (partition) through the box. These pins are also referred to as “fingers” and “tongues”. The purpose of these elements is not to allow the door to be removed when the door hinges have already been knocked down. Naturally, the tabs can also be cut off. However, this takes time, which the criminals clearly lack..

Another method to protect your home is to install hidden hinges on the main doors. But the door equipped with hidden hinges, although it is not a 100% guarantor, however, with the excellent qualifications of the attacker, will not give up so easily and will allow you to win an additional ten to fifteen minutes. The second important trump card of hidden door hinges is a much more aesthetic appearance of the front door.

In the process of choosing a door, you must take into account the number of hinges. It will significantly depend on the weight of the door leaf. That is why, by all means, ask the seller for the product passport. Pay attention to the indicated weight of the door leaf and the number of its hinges. If the front door will open more than 50 times a day, then, in this case, leading manufacturers advise to put three or four hinges. This will help you redistribute the load on the door hinges. It is also necessary to make sure that the hinges are with a support ball or bearing, which will be a guarantee that the hinges do not wear out. Abrasion is the cause of door sagging. For all those who plan to purchase custom-made doors, recommendations regarding the number of hinges relative to the weight of the door leaf may be as follows: with a door weight of up to 70 kilograms, 2 hinges are enough. For a weight over 70 kilograms, three or four loops are needed. Moreover, the manufacturer should choose those loops that are designed for a completely certain weight.

Manufacturers and their prices for door products

Which door is better for the apartment? We advise you to divide your choice into 2 camps: domestic firms, import companies. Due to insufficient perfection of production technology, our domestic doors are worse in quality (and, in addition, in technical “bells and whistles”) than imported ones. As a result, they are less expensive. On average, the cost of metal entrance doors ranges from $ 200-400 for an entry-level domestic copy. Another option is $ 400-800 (for import). However, there is one significant problem in imported doors – not all doors fit our openings in size. There are narrower doors, and there are wider ones. Therefore, before you go shopping, measure the doorway. It may also happen that you will not find the door required by the dimensions. In this case, you need to take a wider door and fit the doorway under the door frame. If your finances are tightly constrained, then, in this case, you should stop at the figure of $ 400 and go in search of the “gate of your fortress.” When choosing a door, do not forget about a peephole, a video surveillance system or an armored glass window. Here you yourself decide what you want to look through, at your guests: both invited and uninvited. Examine the door carefully: it must have all of the above safety attributes: porches, platbands, “tongues”. A reliable door frame must be hung directly on the wall with a special U-shaped mount.

Moreover, you need to take into account the adjacent walls. If it so happens that the wall is adjacent to the door, then, in this case, it is impossible to catch on with a U-shaped grip. In this case, you need to abandon this type of door frame and take an ordinary (flat) box. You don’t need to be upset about this. Indeed, with proper fastening, it will not give way to a U-shaped door frame in any way.

It is desirable that there is also a place for 2 locks in the front door. If there are more locks, it will not be very convenient. As practice has shown, 2 reliable locks are enough. From the outside, the door is upholstered with granite (leatherette), plastic, wood. Of course, the latest finishing method is very expensive, and won’t fit into our $ 400. Entrance doors of the initial, as well as the middle price group, as a rule, are painted with powder coating. This is more rational, since the funds that could have gone to aesthetics are spent on higher quality. It looks not as attractive as a door upholstered with natural oak or ash, but these doors also have a dignity – in case of fire they will not burn at all.

So, we have considered all the main points of choosing front doors. Naturally, this is not easy to do within a single publication. However, we have tried our best for you. It is important to know that only one out of five thefts occurs by forceful burglary (physical destruction of the front door). The other 4 occur by the method of intelligent hacking (selection of keys, master keys to locks).