Sliding Doors And Window Hardware That Stick

Nothing generates more small complaints in a managed property than doors and windows that do not work properly.

A balcony slider that takes two hands. A window that will not stay up. A lock that only catches if you lift the handle. None of them are serious. All of them get reported repeatedly, and each report is a visit.

They are worth fixing properly once, because the same fault reported four times costs more than the repair.

Why sliding doors get heavy

The rollers wear out. They are a consumable, they carry a heavy glass panel, and after enough years they flat-spot or seize.

But before replacing them, check the track. Grit, sand and hardened debris in the track is the most common cause, and on a balcony facing the ocean it fills constantly. A track cleaned properly makes a lot of heavy doors light again.

The other cause is the frame. If the building has moved, or the sill has dropped, the frame is no longer square and the door binds at one corner regardless of what the rollers are doing. That one shows as wear on one side only, and replacing rollers does nothing.

Windows that will not stay open

On an awning window it is the winder or the stay. Both wear.

On a double hung it is the balance. When one side fails the sash goes crooked and jams, which reads as a stuck window rather than a broken balance.

On sliding windows it is the same story as sliding doors, rollers and track.

Locks and handles

Most lock complaints are alignment rather than the lock. The keeper has moved, or the door has dropped, and the bolt no longer lines up with the hole.

Adjusting the keeper takes ten minutes. Replacing the lock takes longer, costs more, and leaves the misalignment in place, so the new lock fails the same way.

The exception is corrosion. Near the coast, hardware in the wrong material degrades from the inside and will keep failing until it is replaced with something suited to the exposure. That is worth spending on once rather than repairing annually.

The seals nobody reports

While the door is being worked on, the weather seals around it are usually finished as well.

Nobody logs a job for a perished seal. They log a job for a draught, a whistle in wind, or water on the floor after a storm, and the seal is what caused it. Doing them at the same time as the hardware costs almost nothing extra and removes the next three reports.

Why these belong in a planned round

Individually each one is a small callout with a call-out cost attached. Across a building they add up to a significant number of visits a year.

Grouped into one round, a team walks the building, fixes the tracks, replaces the worn hardware, adjusts the keepers and redoes the seals in the same attendance. The complaint rate drops because the causes were addressed rather than the symptoms.

That is the argument for planned work over reactive work in general, and doors and windows are where it shows up most clearly.

What to log

Which unit, which opening, and what it does rather than what the resident thinks is wrong. A door that binds only at the top is different information to a door that is heavy along the whole run.

We handle doors, windows and hardware under carpentry, and on managed buildings we would rather do them in one pass than one at a time. If you have a list building up, send us the list.