Door hinge positioning

[Charles F]

Hi All,

I'm about to hang a new front door, and have a query about hinge positioning.

It's a heavy (55kg-ish) composite wooden door, and I'll use heavy duty stainless ball bearing 100mm hinges. On almost all doors the top hinge is traditionally placed 6-8 inches from the top of the door, and the lower

10-12 inches up from the base. On this door I intend using a third hinge, and the position of this is my query. On many doors a third hinge is placed approximately centrally, but I've noticed that more recently the third hinge has on some doors moved up to 12 inches or so below the top hinge.

I can see that the latter would spit the load between the two top hinges more effectively, but equally the centre of the door would be less supported.

Any views on which to go for, plus advantages and disadvantages of the two styles? Or does it matter....

Thanks,

Charles F

[Brian Gaff]

I think to some extent it depends on the weight distribution in the door. Also of course you may find that the door or its support warps when loaded so really look at similar installations that have not given trouble, though wooden doors seem to hate me when I used to hang them. Brian

[Andy Burns]

Two hinges nearish the top seems to be the continental way, central seems to be the more traditional UK way, visually I prefer the central hinge, not sure the advantages of the two at the top method.

[Huge]

Whichever you use, make sure the hinge axes are in line. I've just removed the central hinge from our front door (which I did not install) because I could find no other way of stopping the intensely irritating creaking as it opened and closed and the off-axis loads applied to the hinge made it move.

[Charles F]

I wonder if that's one of the benefits of the two-at-the-top option - it makes it less likely that they will be significantly out of line, especially with slightly curved/warped doors.

Charles F

[Charles F]

In our last house we had original 1930's panelled wooden doors, which all seemed to warp, move, or change size with the weather.

In this 70's house, on moving in ten years ago, I replaced all the original egg box doors with composite MDF and oak doors - and they still all fit as well as the day they were hung. So I'm now very much in favour of composite doors for their stability - and they use a lot less scarce hardwood too.

Charles F

[John Rumm]

Historically its always been 6" down from the top, 8" (or a bit more) up from the bottom, and the central hinge midway between the other two. Its a system that works well, so if doing a door, its what I would go with unless there was a compelling reason for doing different.

I have noticed that things like hospital swing doors are often done with the middle hinge much higher. Presumably its in response to the extra weight of the fire doors, and amount of abuse they get with people bashing beds and equipment into them every day - gravity would tend to pull more on the top hinge than the others.

For a normal domestic door, the traditional arrangement is aesthetically more pleasing IMHO.

[Steve Walker]

I had one internal (bathroom) door warp when it was removed and left propped against a wall for too long. As it matched the rest of the house, I don't want to replace it, so I fitted a third hinge in the middle, specifically to force it to straighten out - and it has been fine for about 8 years now.

SteveW

[Charles F]

Thanks to all for ideas and info - as it's a new door and frame, and both are pretty flat, I'll go for centre hinge.

Just as an aside, at a newly refurbished hospital today, the extra wide doors had three hinges at the top, spaced at about 10" /200mm, and one at the base. Not seen this layout before....

Charles F

[DerbyBorn]

The likelyhood of all 3 taking their share of the downward thrust is remote without jig-borer accuracy.

[Charles F]

I think these doors arrived pre-hung in a substantial frame, with all door furniture pre-fitted at the factory, so in this case the hinge alignment accuracy may well have been good enough to split the load evenly. However, I'm sure you are right about this being a waste of time for doors hung on site by hand.

Charles F