Warped Door
Warped
doors aren’t hard to detect. You
usually notice that the door is getting very hard to open or takes just a little
more slamming before it will close. Wood
doors are the worst for getting warped but it does happen to metal doors too.
The
wood door is usually sealed on all of its surfaces with a light coat of varnish
or lacquer, but if that gets a scratch, or an area just rubs off, the next time
it rains or at a change of seasons the moisture difference seeps into the door
and causes it to warp. The more the
door warps, the harder it is to use the lock.
The metal door warping is typically the result of being kicked at the
bottom during opening or someone using a wedge type door stop to hold it open.
In most cases I have seen, the top of the door contacts the jamb first
when the door is warped.
When
installed correctly a door should take very little pressure in the closing
direction. As a door warps either
the top of the door or the bottom will contact the jamb before the other end of
the door. In order to get that other
end aligned with the jamb and allow the lock to engage you need to push or pull
harder on the door.
There
is a way to fix it!
But
it does require some patience. You
will need a wooden pencil. Where the
door contacts the jamb is a projecting part of it called the stop strip.
Sometimes the stop strip is part of the jamb and sometimes it is nailed
or screwed in place.
Place
the pencil between the stop strip and the door and pull hard on the knob or
lever until the door latches in place. The
pencil is effectively bending the door to reverse the warping.
You need to leave the door closed with the pencil in place for around 15
minutes, that’s where the patience comes in.
After the 15 minutes, unlock the door, retrieve the pencil, and check the
door. If there hasn’t been enough change, try it again with a thicker pencil.
If
it is a wood door, find the place that is letting the moisture inside and
refinish it once the door is straight again.
Note that in a few cases the door can become bowed and just the middle
doesn’t touch the stop strip causing the need for slamming to latch.
In those cases you need to put a pencil or something a little thinner at
the top and bottom to straighten it.
The
same process can be applied to a metal door but they may require something
larger than a pencil to have any lasting effect.
Copyright © 2012, Thelockman LLC. ALL rights reserved