Door swings shut

Stan in Oly, WA

Well-known Member
I have a door that swings shut if left open. It's in a location that makes it not much of a problem, and a door that won't stay open isn't that bad as problems go, anyway. Still, it's annoying. I used to know how to adjust the hang of a door to get it to balance, but now I can't remember what to do. If it involves moving the hinges in or out (deeper or further out of the jamb), can I get the same results from either shimming one hinge out or mortising the other one deeper?

Stan
 
If the door is near plumb and only swings slowly, a quick-fix is to remove one hinge-pin, the middle one on a three hinge door, and bend it a little. Drive it back in. If it binds enough the door will stay put.
 
If it is a pre hung door you move the casing, not the hinges. If it swings closed the top needs to come out to center the weight.
 
That's not good news. It's not a pre-hung door, so adjusting the jamb to plumb it up would be difficult all out of proportion to the benefit---particularly when there are simpler ways to deal with it. Thanks for the information. It saves me from wasting time doing something that couldn't work.

Stan
 
Bill;

If it works most of the time, how come you have to keep doing it ("I do it all the time at work")? How many doors have you got at work, anyway? I'm teasing---I know what you mean.

Stan
 
This solution is a bit odd perhaps but I had a door here that slowly closed itself. I put a fragment from one of those small magnets from a computer hard drive under the rubber tip of the springy door stop and drove a steel roofing nail flush into the door where it touches. It has just enough pull to hold the door open if pushed full open upside the door stop. If you throw it open it will bounce of the door stop of course.
 
That's a novel solution, Chris. Out of semi-professional pride I was hoping to actually fix the problem, but I've decided to wait for something that matters more. In the time since I posed this question this morning, I've watched a few YouTube videos about the problem. The fixes were jury-rigged, but clever. Putting a slight bend in a hinge pin was the most common. An even simpler one is to straighten a twist-tie (like some bags of bread are closed with), and put it down the hole the hinge pin goes in to cause some drag.

On the subject of magnets, have you ever seen those rare earth magnets? A friend gave me four of them, each one about the size of a stack of three quarters. They're amazingly strong---so strong that you can't pull two of them apart, you have to slide one off the other until you can get ahold of it. If you put one up to another one, they slam together so hard that one of mine broke in half from that. I used one as part of a replacement flap in my dog door. I cut plastic from a welding curtain to the right size and hung it from the top of a steel frame I made. Then I silicon caulked a rare earth magnet to the center of the bottom edge. When a dog come through the dog door, that flap swings into place and stops the first time. I like it better than the commercial dog door it replaced, which is a good thing because I've got about $150 worth of my time into it, and a replacement dog door would only have cost me $35. Oh well.

Stan
 
just to clarify , worked at a 90 room nursing home and now a elementary school. Don't have too many doors that do that but its a handy little trick when you need it. Bill
 
take a piece of that magnet that broke on you and fix it to the doorstop--it might just stick but you'll want the rubber cap over it eventually. Tape a small washer to the door and see how much force it exerts. On a table try the magnet to washer and magnet to nail to see if your getting a similar pull. A bit of play might be required--but in my case the door didn't require much pull to hold it open. When starting to close my door I can barely feel the pull of the magnet as I pull the door away from it--I'm sure nobody else would notice not knowing it was there. It was a piece of a magnet (that broke) that I used and those from old hard drives are pretty strong. Good luck.
 

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