Catch for Bomb bay doors.

[Zikki Malambo]

We have a "loft door", which is basically a large heavey room door mounted on the ceiling. It has fallen down once or twice, and one one occasion narrowly missed SWMBO. She say's it has to go!

However, my brother in law has come up with an alternative suggestion.......

Take it off and cut it in half lengthways (if necessary putting some timber down the edge to close the gaps) then rehang the two half doors, bomb bay style.

SWMBO has agreed to this, but what catches can we use? I can only think whatever we use would need to be mounted at the ends, also we ideally want to be able to open & close it from below with a "stick" rather than having to climb on a chair to undo bolts or whatever.

Any ideas?

[mrcheerful]

just use a "one touch latch" at each end of each door

mrcheerful

[Timothy Murphy]

Would magnetic catches be strong enough? (They have incredibly strong magnets now, but I haven't seen them used in d-i-y at all.)

But I have a fairly large attic door of the type you mention. I found a rather nice brass bolt-like device with a spring which has a ring which one can open with a hook on a long pole.

[Aidan]

How about hanging the doors so that they swing upwards into the loft? When shut they would rest on a 'door-stop' around the hatch. No danger of the door swinging down & braining someone.

[Rob Morley]

Why not counterbalance it with a cantilever arm or pulley? Get the balance right and magnetic catches will be sufficient to hold it, plus it will be easier to open and close.

[BigWallop]

Couldn't the whole door be hinged to open into the loft, rather than downward into the hallway? Could the door be hung so that it opens length ways so that you could install a ladder type thing on the back of it?

Placing thin stops around the bottom of the hatch opening, so the door rests on them rather than fall right down, would be the best bet for this. The hinges could then be placed on the face of the door that looks into the loft, and on the side of the joist so that the door opens upward into the loft space, rather than falling on top of heads in the hall.

The door could also be installed on hinges at the narrow end and have a ladder installed on its back. You could have one strong draw latch that you can operate with a pole and lower the door down to reveal a sliding ladder that reaches the floor.

[Ian Stirling]

Might simply upgrading the catch, so it's utterly impossible for it to open accidentally?

[Zikki Malambo]

Top marks for lots of cracking ideas!

The loft already has a pull down ladder of the type that doesn't need mounting on the door, and also when down (as it currently is in one piece) it hangs over one of the bedroom doors, so distracted spouses (spouse!) has been known to walk into it. (We also have a large fully glazed upvc door downstairs, which i've had to stick a picture of Wallace "Windows are our speciality" onto. since she wlked into it twice!)

I think splitting it and having it open inwards is the winner.

[Richard Sterry]

I suspect that the existing catch is the push-to-latch and push-to-unlatch type. I am very wary of these after a prospective buyer looking round my last house was nearly bashed in the face by the corner of the trapdoor, after it unlatched itself without warning.

My current loft trapdoor has the kind of catch that you rotate through 90 degrees, which is pretty foolproof unless you deliberately only turn it through 45 degrees after closing it. It came with the loft ladder, but I daresay you can buy them, or something very similar, separately.

Rick

[Zikki Malambo]

Hmm......

Had another thought, and that is that the doors can't go 'uppards' as the bottom of the ladder sticks out into the hatch when it's in the closed position.

The current arrangement is a standard doorknob type latch.

Perhaps the kind of thing you have to turn through 90 degrees together with some sort of cantilever and weight arrangement is the way to go.

I can sort of visualise how the cantilever & weight thing might work, but wonder if the poster of this suggestion (sotty, forgoten who suggested it) could give some more pointers.

The other idea I have (though it goes outside my original design brief, as i'd need to stand on a chair or some such in order to open/close the doors) is to have some sort of rope & pully arrangement to fix the first door (via a butch hook & eye) and then have the second door latch onto that. This would allow the latch to be in the centre of the long door edge rather than one at each end of each "leaf"

I suppose the other option is to get in touch with Nick Parks and see if he can ask Wallace & Gromit to come up with something!

[Rob Morley]

It was just an idea I came up with for dealing with a loft hatch I put in a while ago - I haven't tried it yet, so I can't give you any specific pointers. Because the cantilever has to clear the joists it will be over-centre when the hatch is open vertically, so won't try to close it. My hatch is thin T&G cladding on a frame, so not too heavy - with yours I guess a longer arm is better than a bigger weight (clearance permitting) to reduce the load on the hinges. As for construction details ... dunno, what have you got lying around? :-)

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