Doors harmonica: how to install correctly

To protect the room, or to divide it into zones, modern constructions are often used, one of which is an accordion door. It is especially convenient when it is difficult to fit a standard hinged construction into the dimensions of a house. The article offers to get acquainted with, what are the doors of an accordion, how to install them yourself.

Advantages and disadvantages of accordion doors

Folding doors harmonica - it is rather a hard curtain. Such products, having a number of advantages, differ in a large number of shortcomings.

The main features of the structures are combined in the table:

Types of accordion doors

Products may vary in material production and some features of the design.

They are:

• Deaf For their manufacture uses a solid array of any opaque material.

• With glass inserts. Such doors of an accordion have a more aesthetic appearance, but also lower strength, which reduces their operational life.

• From plastic. Most often, it is not very durable products. In addition to the canvas, made of plastic, many elements of accessories are made of the same material, which also does not have a long service life.

• From the tree. These are more durable designs. They have no plastic parts, and the most wearing parts are made of metal.

Tip: When choosing a structure for installation by hand, preference should be given to wooden options. They have a more attractive appearance, and durable structural elements. In addition, the wood leads to less temperature compared with plastic.

Doors accordion may have a different number of folding fragments, depending on the size of the opening.

The design of the accordion door

Installing an accordion door with your own hands, begins with an introduction to its design.

The diagram shows that the product consists of:

• Top rail - pos. 1c.
• Two side guides: left - pos. 1a and right - pos. 1b.
• Two half panels: right and left - pos. 3
• The main panels - pos. five.
• Connecting joint - pos. four.
• Docking Rail - Pos. 2
• Panels with lock - pos. 6
• Runners - Pos. 7, designed to move the door leaf.
• Stoppers - Pos. 8, for fixing the door leaf.
• Screws - Pos. 11, for mounting the guide rail.
• Pens - Pos. 9, for closing the door.
• Latches - Pos. ten.

The choice of design

In order to avoid problems when installing the accordion door, and it harmoniously fit into the opening and in the interior of the room, it is necessary to make the right choice of model.

To do this, you should follow some recommendations:

• It is necessary to acquire an accordion door in accordance with the interior of the room, taking into account the technical features of adjacent rooms.
• You should not install an accordion door in a doorway 0.5 meters wide. In the open position it will be difficult to move from one room to another.
• Correctly need to calculate the number of canvases required for a particular interior doorway.
• You should not save when buying a product, who do not know that the miser pays twice. In cheap models, in the production of using plastic of poor quality and fragile fittings, which can not withstand large and frequent loads.

Tip: When purchasing a kit for an accordion door, it is necessary to take panels with a margin in case of unexpected damage to the elements of the canvas. This will allow, if necessary, to quickly replace the damaged panel. Production is constantly updated, old models are removed from production, and the presence of an additional element will help to avoid the situation when the part needs to be replaced and it is not on sale.

Tools and materials for the installation of doors

Typically, a set of doors of this design has everything you need, including fasteners and some spare parts. In addition, many manufacturers add additional lamellas to the kit, which allow you to independently increase the size of the door accordion, which is especially important when there is a wide opening for the doors.

In addition to the set, additional materials will be needed to install the accordion door. Their list is determined during the preparation and subsequent finishing of the doorway.

In any case, you must purchase:

• Beautiful platbands. At the same time their thickness is chosen more than 15 mm, which will reliably hold the door during its operation.
• Punch, to increase the doorway.
• Building level.
• Plummet.
• Impact electric drill.
• Angle 90 °.
• Hacksaw.
• Stuslo.
• Roulette.
• Mounting foam.
• Wooden bowls or bars.

Preparation of the opening

The assembly instructions for the accordion door do not require dismantling the old box. But in this case, the width of the opening is significantly reduced.

Tip: Before installing the accordion door, in order not to reduce the door opening, remove the box of the old door and then knock off the peeling plaster to a concrete slab or brickwork.

Thereafter:

• Aperture measurements are performed.

• Purchased the model you like.

• Determined the need to install dobor. They may be needed to reduce or increase the doorway.
• After the final assembly of the box with dobori, it is carefully inserted into the opening. It is fixed in the desired position with wooden bars and wedges.

Tip: For installation with the greatest accuracy, you need to install the maximum number of wedges, and choose their length approximately equal to the width of the door opening. This will prevent deformation of the box when fastening it with anchors, dowels or blowing foam.

• Holes are drilled inside the box, through which it is fastened inside the opening with long anchor bolts or dowels. The optimal number of such fastenings on each side is 5 anchors.
• Cavities between the wall and the dobers are foamed.

• After the curing of the foam, excess material is cut off.

Door leaf assembly

The photo shows the technology of assembly of the canvas for the accordion door:

• According to the size of the box, the panels are laid out for the manufacture of sashes.
• When using wood or lumber, the ends of the elements are treated with fine sandpaper.
• Surfaces are wiped from dust.
• Glued edge.
• Marked installation location of accessories.
• In the planned places of the extreme panel, holes are drilled for the metal axes above and below.
• Axles are attached.
• On the last panel is a roller slider.
• Cloths are stacked on the table or floor in the order of their connection.
• There are three loops between the panels. To avoid skewing, and then the formation of cracks on the canvases, loops of the same level should be placed at the same height.
• Cloths are fastened so that after the door is fully opened, a gap of three millimeters remains between the elements.

Installation design

After preparation of the opening and door leaf assembly, the work is performed in the following sequence:

• By a given size, corresponding to the width of the door opening, reduced by 4 mm, the rail is cut by a hacksaw.
• Drilled into parts with a pitch of 30 centimeters holes for mounting.
• The guide is fixed with one screw from either end so that it remains movable.
• The latch is mounted: the axis of the end panel is wound into it, and the carriage slider is inserted.

• The door leaf is installed and suspended. To this end, a guide mounted on one screw is retracted to the side and support plates are inserted into it.
• The assembled panels fold up like an accordion and are raised up by carriages.
• The panels are inserted into the groove of the guide profile.

• The guide is put in place and self-tapping screws screwed finally to the door leaf.
• The operation of the moving mechanisms and the smooth movement of the panels are checked.

The whole process of assembling the structure shows in detail the video in this article.

Handle and lock fastening

The final stage of the installation is the fastening of the handle to the door of the accordion and the lock. Usually, the lock is chosen magnetic, but if desired, you can use other types of locking products.

The sequence of operations:

• The marking is made for placement of door accessories. In this case, the handle should be slightly shifted from the edge of the door-accordion. Otherwise, it may interfere when closing the opening tightly adjoin the canvas to the wall.
• On the extreme panel of the door, from the side of the lock installation, holes are drilled to fix the lock and handle.
• Installed all the accessories.
• Checked the smoothness of the blade, the absence of cracks, distortions.
• After installation, the doors can be decorated with decorative platbands on both sides around the interior portal.

The overall technology, how to install the doors of an accordion is almost the same, but different models differ in their design features. For example, on the material and method of joining lamellae. Therefore, in each case should be guided only by the manufacturer's instructions for this design.