Browse Forums Windows & Doors 1 Feb 10, 2014 4:33 pm I have just purchased a house with a set of 6 Centor Bifold doors and built in screens at the back. The house is less than 2 years old but the doors are sticking at the bottom and there is a gap between the active door and the folding doors. I assume this is due to the lintel has sagging a bit or the building has settled since they were installed. The building inspector commented on it and said they can be adjusted. I am also interested in getting 3 keyed bolts to replace the non locking ones. I called the company that installed them and they quoted me over $650 to install the bolts and adjust the door, or $520 if I install the bolts myself. I think the bolts are about $90 each, which means they are charging $250 just to adjust a few bolts. I am not willing to pay this much. I would have thought it would be half an hour's work at the most. Has anyone any suggestions where I should go next? I am not sure how easy it is to adjust the doors myself. Re: Centor Bifold Door adjustment 2Feb 19, 2014 11:05 am A bit more information. I had a go at adjusting the doors myself. The horizontal adjustment on the active door was easy, but the vertical adjustments on the top hinges of the bifolds were already at the highest position and the doors are still sticking at the bottom. I can't see how these can be adjusted without actually redoing the frame or altering the doors themselves. Can someone suggest if I should be referring this to the builder (who I don't know from a bar of soap) or the window company? Re: Centor Bifold Door adjustment 3Feb 19, 2014 12:24 pm Ripsnorta A bit more information. I had a go at adjusting the doors myself. The horizontal adjustment on the active door was easy, but the vertical adjustments on the top hinges of the bifolds were already at the highest position and the doors are still sticking at the bottom. I can't see how these can be adjusted without actually redoing the frame or altering the doors themselves. Can someone suggest if I should be referring this to the builder (who I don't know from a bar of soap) or the window company? Assuming the house is still in warranty, refer to the builder, it's his problem. Ed "ECOECO" At 'EcoEco', we design windows, we design the best windows, we do it for you, so that when you’re happy we are happy. Tel. 1800 326 326 Re: Centor Bifold Door adjustment 4Feb 19, 2014 1:51 pm ed @ ecoclassic Ripsnorta A bit more information. I had a go at adjusting the doors myself. The horizontal adjustment on the active door was easy, but the vertical adjustments on the top hinges of the bifolds were already at the highest position and the doors are still sticking at the bottom. I can't see how these can be adjusted without actually redoing the frame or altering the doors themselves. Can someone suggest if I should be referring this to the builder (who I don't know from a bar of soap) or the window company? Assuming the house is still in warranty, refer to the builder, it's his problem. Ed Thanks, I'm not sure if it will be covered by warranty but I will give him a call. Re: Centor Bifold Door adjustment 5Feb 19, 2014 3:36 pm there are a couple of things you can check. 1 - Centor has on their website some installations instructions you can download, this includes adjusting. 2 - if the head and sill are not dead straight this will cause the problem with your doors. You can check this by either running an eye over the length, or using a string line, even a few millimeters can cause issues. It may be a case of the head needing to be screwed back up. I hope this information helps. Re: Centor Bifold Door adjustment 6Feb 19, 2014 4:10 pm The Door Keeper there are a couple of things you can check. 1 - Centor has on their website some installations instructions you can download, this includes adjusting. 2 - if the head and sill are not dead straight this will cause the problem with your doors. You can check this by either running an eye over the length, or using a string line, even a few millimeters can cause issues. It may be a case of the head needing to be screwed back up. I hope this information helps. Thanks, that is something to think about. I might try the stringline. Re: Centor Bifold Door adjustment 7Feb 21, 2014 1:01 pm There are actually 2 easy ways to adjust Centor Bifold hardware. We actually build a lot of bifold doors using Centor bifold hardware. If you are after horizontal adjustment, look inside the top and bottom tracks near the jambs. You will see phillips head screws in each. From this point its simple. Get a big phillips head screw driver and tighten the screw if you want to tighten the gap at the other end and loosen the screws if you want to loosen the gap at the other end. Should be straight forward. The vertical or height adjustment can be done from outside..... Disengage all the locks and partially open the doors. Then (from outside) you will see all the top hinges that connect to the track. These hinges are adjustable. There is a safety clip that you need to pull down, but once you do it's as simple as putting in a flat head screw driver and tightening the screw. This will lift the doors. So obviously loosening the screw will lower the doors. If you want more information go to my website. Binq windows and doors (just google it). Send me an email through the contact form and I will send you our adjustment instructions. Although it is under the build contract, the supplier should still warrant the products they manufactured. Easy done! Good Luck Re: Centor Bifold Door adjustment 8Feb 21, 2014 2:48 pm joelwindows There are actually 2 easy ways to adjust Centor Bifold hardware. We actually build a lot of bifold doors using Centor bifold hardware. If you are after horizontal adjustment, look inside the top and bottom tracks near the jambs. You will see phillips head screws in each. From this point its simple. Get a big phillips head screw driver and tighten the screw if you want to tighten the gap at the other end and loosen the screws if you want to loosen the gap at the other end. Should be straight forward. The vertical or height adjustment can be done from outside..... Disengage all the locks and partially open the doors. Then (from outside) you will see all the top hinges that connect to the track. These hinges are adjustable. There is a safety clip that you need to pull down, but once you do it's as simple as putting in a flat head screw driver and tightening the screw. This will lift the doors. So obviously loosening the screw will lower the doors. If you want more information go to my website. Binq windows and doors (just google it). Send me an email through the contact form and I will send you our adjustment instructions. Although it is under the build contract, the supplier should still warrant the products they manufactured. Easy done! Good Luck Thanks for your reply. I worked out how the doors adjust mainly by trial and error. The tricky thing was working out how the locking mechanism on the screws worked. I have done the horizontal adjustment on the active door and it is now working correctly. I found that all of the vertical adjustments on the folding door top hinges were already at the highest position and the doors are still sticking at the bottom in one section of the frame. The end hinge still can go up further so I will try adjusting that on the weekend and see if it makes a difference as it could be putting all the doors out of alignment. I have a feeling that the problem is with the frame and it is going to be difficult to fix. I'll do some measurements to see if the frame is out of square before ringing the builder. The fact that the hinges have already been adjusted to the max suggests that the previous owner has already tried to fix it. I'm a bit worried that it will be very expensive to remedy and the builder will try and wash his hands of it. Re: Centor Bifold Door adjustment 9Feb 24, 2014 9:42 am I did some measuring on the weekend and it turns out that the door opening is about 7-8 mm lower in the middle than it is at the ends which is what is causing the doors to stick. It is a full 2400 in height at each end, but slightly lower in the middle section. There just isn't enough height in the middle for the doors to slide easily. It looks a bit like like the lintel has bowed under the weight of the doors. Does anyone know if this is common? Re: Centor Bifold Door adjustment 10Feb 24, 2014 9:27 pm I wouldn't say it is overly common. The doors shouldn't be that heavy to bow the lintel down, unless the lintel was underspec to start with. Hopefully whoever installed the doors left a gap between the door frame and the house frame. If this is the case it is simply a matter of opening the doors up, removing the architrave and rescrewing through the top track to straighten the head. If there is no gap unfortunately it won't be a fun or simple exercise to rectify. First step is to remove your internal architrave and check for clearance. If you have clearance, happy days. If you don't then the onus will definitely fall on the builder to fix. Either way I would recommend notifying the builder as it would seem that you may have a structural issue. Re: Centor Bifold Door adjustment 11Feb 27, 2014 1:00 pm joelwindows I wouldn't say it is overly common. The doors shouldn't be that heavy to bow the lintel down, unless the lintel was underspec to start with. Hopefully whoever installed the doors left a gap between the door frame and the house frame. If this is the case it is simply a matter of opening the doors up, removing the architrave and rescrewing through the top track to straighten the head. If there is no gap unfortunately it won't be a fun or simple exercise to rectify. First step is to remove your internal architrave and check for clearance. If you have clearance, happy days. If you don't then the onus will definitely fall on the builder to fix. Either way I would recommend notifying the builder as it would seem that you may have a structural issue. Thanks heaps for your help. I'll contact the builder as my next step. Re: Centor Bifold Door adjustment 12Mar 21, 2014 1:49 pm Sadly this is all too common. I see a lot of bifold doors that have trouble working properly after being adjusted to the max mostly because the builder has put a low spec lintel over the opening and has probably just allowed for the load above the doorway never mind another 300-400kg of doors as well. Ripsnorta, let us know the outcome. Stewie Thanks for your thoughts. Do you feel your louvre sidelite security mesh is safe? I was thinking no window at all so no one can see if I'm near the front door, shadows… 2 716 Black on light wood does look good. Not sure if it will be as long lasting as a steel finish? 6 6353 I’m in a similar position except I’m after sliding 3 stacking doors. I am on a second-story apartment of which the balcony would not adequately fit any bi-fold or… 5 16156 |