Two small plastic eyes sit about six inches off the garage floor, one on each side of the opening, pointed at each other. They are the least impressive part of a garage door and the part most likely to strand you. In Southwest Florida they also live in about the worst environment you could design […]
Exit devices are the one piece of door hardware that gets used constantly and inspected rarely. Staff push through a panic bar a hundred times a day, feel it get gritty, learn the trick of shoving the door with a hip, and stop noticing. Then a fire inspection or an insurance walkthrough happens and the […]
The most misleading thing about a forced door is that it often still closes. The lock has been replaced, the splintered trim has been filled, and from three feet away everything looks normal. Six weeks later the door starts sticking, the deadbolt misses its hole, or a gust of wind pops it open — and […]
Garage door cables almost never fail without notice. Weeks or months before one lets go, it starts shedding wire strands — a few fine metal whiskers that catch a rag, a rust-coloured smear on the drum, a faint clicking as the door rises. Most people never look, because the cables sit at the far left […]
A sliding patio door in a Toronto condo lives a harder life than the same door in a bungalow. It is higher up, so it takes more wind. It gets used as the only way onto the balcony, so it cycles thousands of times a year. And when it starts to bind, the owner usually […]
Some front doors give you a clear warning before they fail. A multi-point lock is not one of them. One week the handle lifts smoothly and the bolts shoot into the frame; the next week you are leaning your shoulder into the slab, lifting the handle twice, and hoping the key turns. Then one evening […]
אחד הדברים שמבלבלים הכי הרבה אנשים שמתחילים לברר על הרחקת יונים הוא הפער בין הצעות המחיר. אותה מרפסת, אותה בעיה, ושלוש הצעות שנראות כאילו הן מתייחסות לעבודות שונות לגמרי. בפועל, לרוב הן באמת מתייחסות לעבודות שונות — פשוט אף אחד לא הסביר את זה. הכתבה הזו לא מדברת על מחירים ספציפיים, אלא על מה שנמצא […]
רוב הפניות שמתחילות ב”יש ריח מוזר מהמזגן” לא נגמרות אצל טכנאי מיזוג. הן נגמרות בקן יונים. זה אחד המקומות שהכי קל לפספס, כי אף אחד לא מסתכל לשם: יחידה חיצונית על קיר אחורי, חלל בין תקרה מונמכת לתקרת הבטון, או ארגז מאסף שהוזנח מאז שהבניין נבנה. הבעיה עם קן נסתר היא שהוא עובד לטובת היונים. […]
There are two entirely different spring systems holding up residential garage doors, and most homeowners have no idea which one is above their head until the day it lets go. That is fine right up until you need a part, because the two systems fail differently, behave differently while failing, and are not interchangeable. Knowing […]
Store owners almost never ask what a glass door repair costs in the abstract. They ask why the quote they just got is different from the one they remember from three years ago, or why the shop across the street paid less for what looks like the same job. Both questions have the same answer, […]