Doors and Hardware: Making a Smooth Entrance
Part 1: Maintaining Locks, Hinges, Closers and Exit Devices
Part 2: Card-Operated Locks Offer Managers Flexibility
Part 3: Door-Hardware Maintenance Includes Lubrication, Adjustment
Part 4: Door Misaligned? Reset the Frame
Part 5: Door-Hardware Maintenance: Weather-Stripping Basics
Door Misaligned? Reset the Frame
By Thomas A. Westerkamp - September 2008
Doors become misaligned either from age or from damage, such as being hit by material handling equipment or other objects. Either the door or the frame sags out of square. In cases where technicians ignore these conditions, both eventually will occur.
Door misalignment usually occurs with wood doors. The solution to the problem is to fasten a toggle bolt attached with two long wires to the upper edge along the hinge side and the lower edge along the strike side of the door. Tightening the toggle bolt will draw the door back into alignment.
Decorative office doors generally do not misalign in this way. Instead, they tend to become misaligned because the frame gets out of line. Frame misalignment usually occurs because of the shifting or settling of a wall, though it also can result from damage, as well.
In either case, the solution is to reset the frame. Technicians might have to remove the wall to get at the shims at the sides, top and bottom of the frame. They can remove the shims, reset the door, plumb it with a bubble level, and install new shims to hold the door in place. They should note where the shims were located when they removed them and place them in the same locations.
Comments
dashoe wrote re: Door Misaligned? Reset the Frame
on 6/28/2010 12:53:29 PM
I have found that heavier (fire-rated) doors have a propensity to "sag" in a "timely" (sheet metal) doorframe screwed to drywall studs behind the decorative jamb cover.
This causes the latch to miss the strike plate, and not secure the door.
To remedy this situation, I raise the latch side of the door up to plumb with a jffy bar, then put a wedge under the door at that point to hold it up. Remove the marginal amount of drywall screws in the top half of the jamb, then refasten with additional self-tapping drywall screw in the new location. (Make sure the screw threads catch the studs behind). Remove the wedge, and voila, back in business.
