The contents
The purchase of an apartment is almost always accompanied by serious repairs requiring a considerable quantity of costly materials, followed by new furniture, household appliances. Therefore in such a situation the first thing to solve the problem of which door to choose in the apartment. You can not think about how convenient and reliable the front door, until summer vacation, or experience a long business trip. The problem will sooner or later have to decide the best option, how to choose a metal door entrance is to use the advice of a professional.
Almost 99% of the cases of criminal infiltrations in the apartment is a consequence of the irresponsible attitude of owners to their security, the desire to save on «useless» cost.
Before you choose a metal door, determine for yourself the main requirements for the product:
- A pleasant and practical look of the outer part of the front door. Better if the appearance of the door will hide the real metal strength and durability.
- Quality heat insulation and sound insulation;
- High resistance metallic part to the occurrence of vandalism;
- Locks and locking devices cannot be opened for 20-30min.
The last point is difficult to estimate reliably, it is dictated by the ordinary criminal statistics of opening the locks. Hackers refused the undertaking, if the chosen target had to spend more than 15 minutes. The rest of the items simply to assess on their own, guided by the tips on how to choose the front door.
The choice of metal entrance doors from the point of view of professional ↑
Before you choose the door, you need to study the characteristics of the hallway or corridor in the apartment, staircases and location of load-bearing walls of the building.
The classic long considered the option of using the double doors, especially in older apartment buildings. The thickness of the walls in some cases exceeded 40cm, allowing you to select and install the shared floor heating wood two doors: the outer is a heavy metal and the inner – light and warm, decorated according to the preferences of the owner. For the metal parts of the unit had additional, back to back to wooden floor heating to install a heavy duty metal welded frame, which is welded garage sheds.
Metal door rim flanges rested on the frame and did not have additional insulation on the inside. Door locks were used on both doors, and metal doors installed garage powerful castle with a cunning non-standard key and a secret known only to the owner.
You can choose a significant advantage of such construction:
- Absolute resistance to cracking with the use of physical force. The lack of insulation made it resistant to fire, high temperatures in case of fire;
- Excellent sound and heat insulation due to the large air cushion between the doors, reaching in some cases 30cm.
- If desired, the owner could choose between opening the inner door, when closed outside, talking to «guests», staying in complete safety,
- Period of operation of exterior doors, according to conservative estimates, could reach 30-40 years old, with no loss of quality with the appropriate level of maintenance and care.
This design was chosen in troubled 90 years of the last century as a response to rampant crime in those days. Today you can select a similar option from small firms, the self-manufacture of door blocks by the customer.
With the advent of high-strength and lightweight composite materials, a significant increase in the efficiency of the systems apartment alarm people began to abandon ideology «safe» and choose a more simple and easy options.
For all the shortcomings of such an option can be considered as the best if you want to choose the front door in a private house.
Entrance steel door from contemporary materials ↑
Modern trade models put on stream, with rare exceptions, they are similar to each other in design and model execution. The main difference is in the quality of the materials used and skill of the work performed, so you need to find and choose quality.
To choose without experience is not easy for you to look at especially:
The first thing to draw your interest is the presence of a powerful metal frame with three or four sheds. Metal profile and metal sheet, reaching for the manufacture of the frame, or, using the carpentry terminology – «lucky», will be the same thickness as in the door construction. But to see «stuffing» specific products is difficult, and in the frame – metal, as on a palm. It is necessary to choose the thickness of sheet metal not less than 2.5 mm, angled the profile does not need to play or to cave in under the pressure of their fingers.
How to choose a front door to the apartment? Ask the seller the passport for goods – in document search for name cold rolled steel sheet, welding in the protective environment. These are signs of the quality of the manufacturing process of the input part. You should not choose the options with the U-like frame, which does not have a trailing low – level threshold. Any professional will tell you that it is rather a cheap imitation than a real way to protect your home.
Most often the cheapest segment of the market of the input metal doors offers to choose a product with 7 ribs, welded to the plane in the vertical direction.
About twice as expensive as the cost of a product with a tubular frame and a thickened outer metal sheet. Such doors provide 3rd class of protection, they can not break primitive tool. Unfortunately, in the market there are many fakes of famous brands, characteristics and quality inferior to even simple pieces of bent metal profiles. The original model is a well-known manufacturer can easily be found on his website, so it is possible to choose the input metal doors in advance having studied all the nuances of protection against forgery.
One of the arguments used by the sellers for sale cheap metal entrance doors is the presence of products of domestic sheds. It would seem, is the guarantee of the physical attacks, but the internal sunshade is not able to carry a lot of weight metal construction.
So it is often used for products with small thickness of the metal. On the other hand, metal outdoor sheds are high-quality models are made of alloy manganese steel, cut which is very difficult, even with the help of «grinders».
Castle and locking devices of metal doors ↑
Already long enough in the question of how to choose the right front door lock to the apartment, there are two opposite opinions:
- Castle, purchased ready mounted on metal entrance doors, to be replaced for more secure and complex option, with the ability «hot» correction secret;
- HASP and locks that come pre-installed on the purchased good quality door, always have high reliability and durability, for another option will not bring any benefits.
Both options are fair in their judgments. The lock needs to be changed necessarily, if, after mounting the front door were installed, abnormal operation of the device, revealed traces of penetration into the mechanism or lost at least one key. In the latter case, you can simply choose another secret of the castle.
Following a generally accepted format, the producers set in a modern metal entrance door at least two locks, simple designs – cylinder in the more expensive options are installing a couple of different types of locks – lever and cylinder.
A fundamental influence on the resistance of the lock-this option has not. More important than the quality of the locks. Required attribute lock is a metal bronenakladki, which protects the device against drilling.
Definitely one of the castles front door should be the so-called «crab» scheme, it usually detainer lock. Such a system increases the resistance to knocking or squeezing nearly an order of magnitude.
Almost always the design of the cylinder lock is provided to lock the possibility to insert the key into the lock when inside the apartment in the castle already inserted the key. This method provides additional security to the opening of the lock.
Control of noise and thermal insulation ↑
To provide thermal insulation in the high-quality models input metal doors are used a slab of foamed polymer or mineral fibers. Cheaper versions – polyurethane foam or pressed cardboard. In the Chinese variants of unknown origin may be no insulation at all. To test it you can choose several different models, knock on a metal surface and compare sound.
Moreover, you should pay attention to the presence and shape of rubber gasket glued around the perimeter of the inner side of the front door. Simple models use a heater in the form of profiled strips, the more expensive – in the form of a tubular profile. The last option is considered the most effective and resistant to wear.
To protect the outer surface from the recent lovers to scratch, make labels or to test the strength of the metal frame, you can choose the model that are powder painted with the increased solid content of ceramic fillers.
It should be noted that in recent years, the manufacturer offers to choose new models with built-in portable wireless camera is capable to react promptly to your home computer image of the scene on the landing.
