Q: Hello: I have a hinge and door seal issue I’m hoping you can help with. I have two slab Masonite doors – each about 110 to 115 pounds in weight. I’m going to be using them as communicating (back to back) doors in a double-stud wall for noise control. Can you tell me what hinges to use? Standard finish (nickel or dull chrome?) -- whatever can get the job done at a reasonable cost. I’m guessing three on each door, 4.5” x 4.5” or so of the five-knuckle variety? It’s for my band practice room, so they won’t be heavily used doors, just heavy. Open and shut a few times a day. The first door will open out, so the hinge pins need to be secure-able on those. Also, I’m looking at installing some ¼” thick door seals on the jambs (like the Zero International 188) – I was looking at the heavier duty Zero 770 model (or similar) but I don’t want to spend that much money. I’d like to know if I need to take the thickness of the Zero 188 “press and seal” strips into account when I hang the door. For example, should I surface mount (no mortise) the jamb side of the hinge in order to gain a bit of space between the door and the jamb on the hinge side? I’m hanging the door myself, so I can install the door stops on the head and latch side jamb in order to leave some room for the seals. Same on the bottom, where I’ll have a threshold to mount the seal against. I just was thinking that a full-mortise hinge wouldn’t leave me much room on the hinge side jamb to put in the seal without doing some routing. I guess I need to know how thick those 188 seals are when the door is in the closed position. Thanks in advance, Todd M.
A: Regarding your questions let's go through them one at a time.
First of all the hinges that I would use would be the
BAHCO BB0168-NRP 5x4.5in Hinge-Full Mortise-Heavy Weight-Ball Bearing-Non Removable Pin-Steel Base
As seen here:
Click Here
as it is an inexpensive yet highly capable, high-performing hinge. Ball Bearing, heavyweight and 5 inch tall that while technically will carry a door heavier than yours yet absolutely give you the peace of mind that the hinge hardware that you have used will be a permanent solution for the opening requirements of swinging the door safely. Additionally this hinge features a non-removable option to give you peace of mind regarding driving the pins out.
Regarding the weather seal that you're requesting which is the
Zero 188S-Bk-3070 Self-Adhesive Gasketing I would make no accommodation for the thickness of the material but I would allow an eighth of an inch gap on each vertical style of the door between the jamb so as an example if you had a wood frame that was 36 inch clear opening with I would make my pre fit door size 35-3/4 inch with a 3° bevel on both stiles. This weather seal is a quarter inch thick when it's in the uncompressed state but you can compress it down certainly to approximately 3/32"
You might consider doing additional methods of sound sealing on the door however if you're simply looking to do the best job at a very reasonable sort of expenditure of effort and cost I would say the above item would do a very good job. Having studied the electric bass I certainly understand the need to help reduce the transmission of sound frequency as much as possible.
Keep in mind there are far more sophisticated means by which to seal the door that would allow you to actually obtain an stc rating but generally you'd be speaking of several hundreds of dollars per opening to do this.
Q: Is this a Cat G or Cat H gasketing?
A: The
Zero 188S-Bk-3070 Self-Adhesive Gasketing
would be Category ‘H’ because Category ‘H’ speaks to “Smoke and Draft Control Gasketing” whereas Category ‘G’ speaks to “Edge Sealing Systems”
A very handy reference comes courtesy of our friends at National Guard Products as seen here:
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