How to install an entrance door

A correctly positioned front door not only ensures the safety of the property, but also reduces heat loss (due to the insulation of the frame) and reduces the audibility of what is happening outside the house or apartment. First of all, you should know that installing the front door with your own hands is possible. Moreover, you can do everything alone, but if the canvas is heavy, it is easier to work together. There is nothing complicated in the technology itself, but there are several features that you need to know before starting the installation yourself.

Preparing for installation

Remove the old door before starting the installation. This must be done carefully, trying not to severely damage the opening. Then the installation of the front door will be quick.

Some Kinds of Steel Entrance Doors

Dismantling the old door

First, the door leaf is removed. If the model has removable hinges, the doors are opened, a crowbar is placed under the lower edge of the canvas, and by lifting the doors, they are removed from the hinges. If the hinges are non-separable, you will have to unscrew them. Better to start from the bottom.

After dismantling the slopes, remove the wallpaper, beat off the plaster or putty. The task is to determine how the box was attached, to find the attachment points. If the door frame is metal, it is usually anchors, pieces of reinforcement. At the junction, they are cut off with a grinder. When all fasteners are cut off, the old box is squeezed out or knocked out. But with this procedure, excessive efforts are not necessary: ​​you can destroy the box so much that it will need to be repaired.

When dismantling, you must cut off the old fasteners

If the frame of the old front door is wooden, everything is easier. The side racks can be cut approximately in the middle, and then, prying them with a crowbar, break them out of the opening. After the sidewalls are removed, the headliner can be easily removed. The threshold is also removed without any problems.

Opening preparation

After the old door has been removed, the doorway is prepared for installation. First, remove all pieces of putty, brick fragments, etc. Get rid of everything that can fall off. Then the resulting opening is evaluated. If there are large voids, they are filled with bricks, planted in cement mortar. Small potholes can be ignored. If there are gaps, it is better to cover them with a solution too.

This is what happens after dismantling the door.

Any significant protrusions that may interfere with installation must be removed. You can use a hammer and chisel or a grinder with a cutting disc.

Carefully inspect the condition of the floor under the door frame. In old buildings, a wooden beam is installed in this place. Often it is already rotten, crumbled. If so, delete it.

If the block looks like a whole, check the condition of the wood with an awl. With a solid effort you stick a few into the wood, shake it several times, take it out. So check in different parts of the bar. If it is difficult to enter, to a shallow depth, the hole remains small, then everything is fine. If not, it enters easily, crumples and / or crumbles from swinging, the wood has become unusable. It also needs to be removed.

Fight off all unnecessary

The vacant space is filled with the same timber (treated with impregnation from decay), laid with bricks. The gaps are filled with mortar.

As a result of all these actions, the doorway should be more or less even. So that you can install a new front door without interference.

Installation of metal doors

Steel (metal) doors are most often used as entrance doors.The door frame, door frame and outer surface of the door leaf are made of metal. To provide the required degree of heat and sound insulation, the canvas is laid with soundproofing material. From the side of the room, the entrance doors can also be sewn up with metal, or maybe with sheet material (budget option).

Metal door structure

On the frame around the perimeter of the vestibule (sometimes on the door leaf), a rubber insulation is laid. It has two functions: it serves to seal and reduces the sound that occurs when the door slams. It turns out a reliable, warm and "quiet" front door.

Preparing the door

Since it is problematic to cut a lock into a metal door, they order doors immediately with a lock. You will receive a kit that includes an already installed lock. Handles come separately. Here they need to be installed in place, screwed with self-tapping screws. Before installation, you need to check the operation of locks and latches. Everything should work smoothly, effortlessly and without problems. If everything is fine, you can start installing the entrance metal door.

Preparing the steel door for installation: checking the operation of the lock, insulating the box with mineral wool

If the doors are installed with access directly to the street (in a private house, for example), the door frame is laid outside with insulation. You can use stone wool cut into strips. It is inserted into the frame and held in place by the elastic force. It has a significant drawback: it is hygroscopic, which is why the doors can rust from the inside (if they stand as an exit to the street and are not sealed tightly). In multi-storey buildings this is not critical: there is no rainfall at the entrance. Another way out is to put foam or fill the frame with foam. They are not afraid of moisture, and the thermal insulation is normal.

So that during installation and subsequent finishing work the paintwork of the box is not damaged, it is pasted over with masking tape around the perimeter. It is removed after it is done door slopes... If any wires enter through the door frame, it's time to install the mortgages - a piece of plastic pipe or corrugated hose through which these wires will get inside.

Installation of interior doors is described here. Read about installation of sliding doors here.

Installation in brick and concrete walls

It is more convenient to put doors in which the canvas can be removed. Before installation, it is removed from the hinges. A door frame is inserted into the prepared opening. At the bottom, it is placed on mounting pads 20 mm high. She should be free in the opening.

We put the door frame on the mounting pads

By changing the thickness of the pads, we achieve that the lower frame is strictly level. This is checked using a building level. Having set it horizontally, we set it vertically: so that the racks do not deviate either forward or backward, but stand strictly vertically. This is also checked with a level, only the device with the bubble is on the short part of the instrument. Another option is to check with a construction plumb line.

We check whether the door frame is aligned vertically

After the box has been aligned, it is wedged with prepared wedges. They can be cut out of wood, or you can buy plastic ones. Wedges are inserted on long racks rub pieces, at the top - two. They should be placed close to the fastening points, but not overlapping them.

Wedge installation example

After installing the wedges, it is checked again whether it is standing correctly: in the horizontal and vertical planes. There should be no deviations.

Next, the installation of a metal door frame in the opening begins. There are two types of mounting holes: steel lugs welded to the box and a through mounting hole (there are actually two of them: in the outer plate with a slightly larger diameter and in the inner one with a smaller one).

Two types of mounting holes

There is no difference in the installation method. Simply, frames with holes in the body of the box can be installed on thinner walls.This can be important if the front door is installed in a panel house: it is far from always possible to put doors with eyelets in them.

Through hole mounting

Iron entrance doors are fastened to anchors or to pieces of steel reinforcement with a diameter of 10-12 mm. The diameter of the fastener is matched to the existing holes. If anchors are to be used, their head must go into the outer hole and "stick" into the inner hole. The diameter of the reinforcement must match the diameter of the holes. In any case, holes are pre-drilled for them.

We take a hammer drill, drill and anchor. The drill is taken of the same diameter as the fastener. Its length should be at least 30 cm. To more accurately determine the depth to drill, masking tape is attached to the drill. It marks a distance that is slightly greater than the required depth.

We mark the drill along the length of the anchor

Installation of fasteners begins from the hinge side. When drilling, it is important not to move the installed box. Drill from the top first.

We drill holes from above, from the hinge side

Install the anchor by hitting it with a hammer. To drown it to the inner edge of the box, insert a screwdriver into the slots, and knock on the screwdriver handle with a hammer. Then, when the anchor is driven, it is still tightened a few turns with a screwdriver. We check if the box was moved during operation - we take a level and check everything.

Drive the anchor deeper

Install the fasteners at the bottom in the same way. We also check the vertical and horizontal lines. If the door leaf is not heavy, you can check at this stage how correctly the frame is exposed. To do this, they hang up the doors and check how smoothly they "sat down", whether there are distortions, cracks and other troubles, how the locks and latches match and work normally.

If the canvas is made of thick sheet steel, weighs about a hundred kilograms, two fasteners are clearly not enough. Then install all the fasteners from the hinge side, as well as one from the lock side. After installing each fastener, the verticality and horizontalness of the box is checked. Then they carefully hang the canvas and check how it "walks". If everything is normal, continue mounting the fasteners. No - you will have to remove the already installed mounts and set the frame in a new way.

We put the anchor in the door frame of the entrance door from the bottom, checking the verticality of the rack

After checking, the canvas is removed again, the already installed anchors are finally tightened. Then they put everything that is needed on the side of the hinges, then on the side of the lock. When everything is finally installed, the door leaf is again hung in place.

Now it is necessary to fill the mounting gaps with foam. To install an entrance door with your own hands, it is better to take it with a low expansion coefficient: it is easier to work with it. In order for the foam to polymerize normally, the cavities that will be filled are moistened with water from a spray bottle (ordinary household). Then everything is slowly filled with foam.

You need to blow out to the full width of the door frame: then there will be no blowing and sound insulation will be better. When installing the door with iron, you do not have to worry about the frame being opened: the rigidity of the metal is such that the expansion force of the foam is far from enough. Therefore, you can generously foam.

Blow out the mounting gaps with foam

Only if foam gets on the canvas should it be removed immediately with a damp cloth. In 5 minutes, you just won't wipe it off. While wet, it is removed without traces. Then you have to scrape, but it does not go away painlessly: traces will remain. The foam will finish curing after 24 hours. Then we can assume that the installation of the front door with your own hands is hung. Left make slopes on the door.

Mounting the lug box

If there are welded plates on the box - lugs - the box is exposed in the same way: on the lining. Then it is leveled and wedged. Then there are two options:

• There are mounting holes in the lugs. Then holes are drilled under them.A piece of reinforcement is cut off, inserted into the hole and hammered.
  

  Installation with fittings

• There are no holes in the lugs, but they are made of thick metal - 3 mm thick or more. Then two pieces of reinforcement are driven in near the plate (pre-drilled holes), and the plate is welded to them.
  

  Weld to two pieces of reinforcement driven into the wall

When installing in this way, you need to control the position of the box even more carefully: it is easy to move it from its place. If not corrected, the doors will not work well.

Read here how to adjust the front door made of metal and plastic.

Installation of an entrance door in a wooden house

In a wooden house, any windows and doors are not mounted directly to the wall, but through a casing or a window. Okosyachka is a wooden beam that is movably attached to a log house (from a log or a bar - it doesn't matter). It is connected by means of a thorn / groove type connection and is held by elastic force. The door frame is already attached to this bar.

Installing a door in a wooden house: first, casing is made

This is a necessary measure. After all, a wooden house is constantly changing its height. For the first five years, he sits down - due to shrinkage and sealing of the planting seams. The first year, doors and windows are not installed at all: too big changes. In the second year, the movements become less pronounced, but they are always present. Therefore, it is impossible to rigidly fix the doors: they can jam or bend, or they will interfere with the normal shrinkage of the log house.

To do this, a groove is cut in the doorway. Casing is made from a bar in the shape of the letter "T". The width of the groove should be slightly less than the thickness of the spike: to hold well. Insert it into the thorn, hammering it with a sledgehammer. That's all. No other hardware.

Please note: the height of the posts is much less than the height of the opening: after installing the lintel, there should be at least 3 cm more for the expansion gap. It is covered with mineral wool. This is also necessary so that the doors do not warp during shrinkage.

Installation of an entrance door in a wooden house in section

After installing the casing, a box is attached to it. There is no need to use anchors. You need powerful screws or screws. It is also necessary to drill holes for them, but take the drill a little less than the diameter. Please note: the fasteners in length should not reach the wall (you can see this in the photo above).

This video shows how to make a casing by forming a groove in the opening.

This video shows another type of making a window: a thorn is formed in the opening. With a chainsaw, everything turns out quickly, but this level of proficiency is available to few.

Installation of a door closer is described here.

Installation of an entrance door in aerated concrete

Another building material with features is aerated concrete. It does not hold shock loads poorly, therefore, it will not work to fix the entrance doors like a brick wall: they will simply fall out. The way out is this: make a frame out of a metal corner, which will be held on the wall due to the stop.

Frame for mounting a metal door in aerated concrete house

In this case, the jumpers that tighten the two corners are made in those places where the fasteners will be located - the lugs or mounting holes. And it is on these jumpers that the door will be held.

Features of installation and construction of metal doors - in the video.

The second mounting method is less common. It requires less investment in time and materials. But how reliable the front door will be, mounted using this technology is unknown. No data yet.