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A correctly installed front door not only ensures the safety of property, but also reduces heat loss (due to frame insulation) 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
Before starting installation, it is required to remove the old door. This must be done carefully, trying not to damage the opening too much. Then the installation of the front door will be quick.
Dismantling the old door
First remove the door panel. If the model is with removable hinges, the doors are opened, a crowbar is placed under the lower edge of the canvas, and lifting the doors, they are removed from the hinges. If the hinges are non-separable, you will have to unscrew them. It’s 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, usually these are 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 needs to be repaired.
If the frame of the old front door is wooden, everything is simpler. Side racks can be cut approximately in the middle, and then, prying with a crowbar, break out of the opening. After the sidewalls are removed, the lintel can be removed easily. Also, the threshold is removed without problems.
Opening preparation
After the old door is removed, the doorway is prepared for installation. First, all pieces of putty, brick fragments, etc. are removed. Get rid of everything that can fall off. Then evaluate the opening, which is the result. If there are large voids, they are filled with bricks planted on cement mortar. Small potholes can be ignored. If there are gaps, it is better to cover them with a solution too.
Existing 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 bar still looks intact, check the condition of the wood with an awl. With a solid effort, stick a few into the wood, shaking a few times, take it out. So you check in different parts of the beam. If it enters with difficulty, to a shallow depth, the hole remains small, then everything is fine. If not, it enters easily, wrinkles and / or crumbles from rocking, the wood has become unusable. It also needs to be removed.
The vacated space is filled with the same beam (treated with impregnation from decay), laid with a brick. 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 the outer surface of the door leaf are made of metal. To ensure 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 they can be with sheet material (budget option).
Rubber insulation is laid on the frame around the perimeter of the porch (sometimes on the door leaf). It performs two functions: it serves to seal and reduces the strength of the sound that occurs when the door slams shut. It turns out a reliable, warm and “quiet” front door.
Door preparation
Since it is problematic to insert a lock into a metal door, they order doors immediately with a lock. You receive a kit that includes an already installed lock. Pens come separately. Here they need to be installed in place, screwed with screws. Before installation, you need to check the operation of locks and latches. Everything should work smoothly, without effort and problems. If everything is fine, you can proceed with the installation of the entrance metal door.
If the doors are installed with access directly to the street (in a private house, for example), the door frame is laid with insulation from the outside. You can use stone wool cut into strips. It is inserted into the frame and held by the force of elasticity. It has a significant disadvantage: 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 precipitation 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 around the perimeter with masking tape. It is removed after the slopes on the door are made. If some wires come through the door frame, it’s time to install mortgages – a piece of plastic pipe or corrugated sleeve through which these wires will get inside.
Installation of interior doors is described here. Read more about sliding doors here.
Mounting in brick and concrete wall
It is more convenient to put doors in which the canvas can be removed. Before installation, it is removed from the hinges. The door frame is inserted into the prepared opening. Below it is placed on mounting pads 20 mm high. She should become free in the opening.
By changing the thickness of the linings, we ensure that the lower frame is strictly level. This is checked using the 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 using a level, only the bubble device is located on the short part of the tool. Another option is to check with a plumb line.
After the box is level, it is wedged with prepared wedges. They can be carved from wood, or you can buy plastic ones. Wedges are inserted on long racks rub pieces, at the top – two. They should be placed near the fasteners, but not overlapping them.
After installing the wedges, it is once again checked whether it stands correctly: in the horizontal and vertical planes. There should be no deviations.
Next, the installation of the metal door frame in the opening begins. There are two types of mounting holes: steel eyes welded to the box and a through mounting hole (there are actually two of them: in the outer plate of a slightly larger diameter and in the inner one of a smaller one).
There is no difference in the installation method. Just frames with holes in the body of the box can be installed on thinner walls. This may be important if the installation of the front door is in a panel house: it is far from always possible to put doors with eyelets in them.
Through hole mounting
Iron entrance doors are fixed on anchors or on pieces of steel reinforcement, with a diameter of 10-12 mm. The diameter of the fastener is selected for the existing holes. If anchors are to be used, their head must fit into the outer hole and “get stuck” in the inner one. The diameter of the reinforcement must match the diameter of the holes. In any case, holes are pre-drilled under them.
We take a puncher, a drill and an anchor. The drill is taken of the same diameter as the fasteners. Its length should be at least 30 cm. To more accurately determine how deep you need to drill, masking tape is attached to the drill. It marks a distance that is slightly more than the required depth.
The installation of fasteners from the side of the hinges begins. When drilling, it is important not to move the installed box. Drill from above first.
Install the anchor, finishing it with a hammer. To sink it to the inner edge of the box, insert a screwdriver into the slots, and tap the handle of the screwdriver with a hammer. Then, when the anchor is driven in, it is still tightened a few turns with a screwdriver. We check if the box has been moved during operation – we take the level and check everything.
We install the fasteners at the bottom in the same way. We also check verticals and horizontals. If the door leaf is not heavy, you can already at this stage check how correctly the box is set. To do this, they hang the doors and check how evenly they “sat down”, whether there are distortions, cracks and other troubles, how much 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 side of the hinges, as well as one from the side of the lock. After installing each fastener, the verticality and horizontality of the box is checked. Then they carefully hang the canvas and check how it “walks”. If everything is fine, continue mounting the fasteners. No – you will have to remove the already installed mounts and set the frame in a new way.
After checking, the canvas is removed again, and the already installed anchors are finally tightened. Then they put everything that is needed on the side of the loops, then on the side of the castle. When everything is finally installed, hang the door leaf in place again.
Now you need to fill the mounting gaps with foam. To install the front door with your own hands, it is better to take it with a small expansion coefficient: it is easier to work with it. In order for the polymerization of the foam to proceed normally, the cavities that will be filled are wetted with water from a spray bottle (ordinary household). Then everything is slowly filled with foam.
You need to blow out the entire width of the door frame: then it will not blow and the sound insulation will be better. When installing a door with iron, you don’t have to worry about opening the box: the rigidity of the metal is such that the expansion force of the foam is far from enough. Therefore, you can lather generously.
Only if the foam gets on the canvas, it should be removed immediately with a damp cloth. After 5 minutes, you just won’t wipe it off. As long as it’s wet, it comes off without a trace. Then you have to scrape, but this does not go away painlessly: traces will remain. The polymerization of the foam will end after 24 hours. Then we can assume that the installation of the front door with your own hands is hung. It remains to make slopes on the door.
Mounting the lug box
If there are welded plates on the box – lugs – the box is set up in the same way: on linings. Then it flattens out and wedged. Next, there are two options:
- The lugs have mounting holes. Then holes are drilled under them. Cut off a piece of reinforcement, insert into the hole and clog.
Mounting with fittings - There are no holes in the eyes, but they are made of thick metal – 3 mm thick or more. Then, two pieces of reinforcement are driven in near the plate (having previously 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.
How to adjust the front door made of metal and plastic, read here.
Installation of the front 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 pigtail. An okosyachka is a wooden beam that is movably attached to a log house (from a log or a beam – it doesn’t matter). It is connected by a tongue/groove connection and held by the force of elasticity. A door frame is already attached to this beam.
This is a necessary measure. After all, a wooden house is constantly changing height. For the first five years, he sits down – due to shrinkage and compaction of the landing seams. The first year, doors and windows are not installed at all: too big a change. In the second year, the movements become less pronounced, but 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, cut a groove in the doorway. They make a casing from a bar in the form of the letter “T”. The width of the groove should be slightly less than the thickness of the spike: to keep well. They insert it into a spike, hammering it with a sledgehammer. That’s all. No other fastener.
Please note: the height of the racks is much less than the height of the opening: after installing the lintel, there should still be at least 3 cm left for the compensation gap. It is covered with mineral wool. This is also necessary so that the doors do not warp during shrinkage.
After installing the casing, a box is attached to it. Anchors are useless here. Powerful self-tapping screws or screws are needed. Under them, it is also necessary to drill holes, but take a drill slightly smaller than the diameter. Please note: the fasteners should not reach the wall in length (this can be seen 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 pigtail manufacturing: a spike is formed in the opening. With a chainsaw, everything turns out quickly, but this level of ownership is available to few.
Installation of the closer on the door is described here.
Installation of the front door in aerated concrete
Another building material with features is aerated concrete. It does not hold shock loads well, therefore it will not work to fix the entrance doors like a brick wall: they will simply fall out. The way out is this: to make a frame out of a metal corner, which will be held on the wall due to the stop.
At the same time, jumpers that tighten two corners are made in those places where fasteners will be located – lugs or mounting holes. And it is on these jumpers that the door will hold.
Features of the installation and design of metal doors – in the video.
The second installation method is less common. It requires less time and material costs. But it is not known how reliable the front door, mounted using this technology, will stand. No data yet.