Size Matters

The forces created by a door's closing action can be imagined as a horizontal crow bar. Suppose you have a boulder that you want to roll down a hill and you can't get behind it because it's up against another rock but there is plenty of room to insert a steel crow bar. Would you do the job with a 20 cm crow bar or a 100 cm crow bar? The leverage you gain from the longer crow bar is the same as the leverage gained by a door on the hinge side. The larger the door, the greater the crushing force between the jam and the door.

We meet a lot of people in our business. We see a lot of doors. There are those standard doors that are "used in all the houses" and then there are those super special door that are custom designed or "architectural".  Believe it or not, the "standard" doors are the most interesting.

We stopped by a door store. Yes, a door store. They sell doors. Therefore, they are door stores. Their technical names vary from language to language and country to country so we will stick with "door store". They have a 760 mm door on the executive office. The conversation went something like this.

"Wow, this is a quite unusual door. It's only 760mm wide."  We said.
"Nope, pretty standard all of Latitude Homes' doors are 760 mm." (as an aside, we are stopping by Latitude for an install on Wednesday. Good to know about their standard door size!)
"Wow really. I haven't installed a 760mm door since the early '90's."

Two days later, we stopped at the private residence of a local home builder.
"Wow, you have a 760mm door too.  I guess they are quite common." We said.
"No, no one uses them any more. This door is 12 years old. All doors pretty much cost the same so it's easier to install a larger, more standard door for all applications rather than having to match the door to the opening on the job site."

Well there's an industry standard for you. (Sarcasm in case you didn't pick up on it)

What size is your door?

Having a great Sunday,

Elizabeth