When you are shopping for new doors for your home, not only are you looking for quality doors that are aesthetically pleasing, but you are also shopping for a wood door manufacturer with a good reputation.
The first thing to consider is what qualities matter to you are your family and consequently what practices you want to support.
When we buy things, we are essentially voting with our money. With that in mind, what are the most important things to consider when choosing a door manufacturer? What practices will you “vote” for? Here are a couple of points for you to consider to get your gears going.
1.Quality
Quality products all start with quality materials. Door manufacturers with high production rates have to produce doors more quickly than they can properly cure wood.
Products are made with wood that isn’t seasoned will shrink as they dry, causing the product to warp and change shape.
The type of wood used will also affect the quality of the product. Are they doors made with a robust wood? Look at the finish of the products.
The finish should be even across the whole piece, making a nice, uniform color. If it’s not, that could indicate the piece has been cheaply done.
2. Sustainability
This is perhaps the most important point to consider, as a company that uses sustainable practices is a company that will continue to be reliable.
From the type of energy the factory uses to operate its machinery to the way the company treats their employees, an attempt at sustainability shows that a company is determined to do the right thing.
Look for a door manufacturer that uses “lean manufacturing”, which is a production technique that aspires to eliminate waste during production.
This not only optimizes the production process but also increases the quality of the produce while minimizing its environmental impact.
For example, Eight Doors uses scraps from the lumber mill to burn to make electricity. This creates a semi-closed loop system, where energy is created through creating the product it was designed to power.
3. Origin of Wood
“A society grows great when men plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit in” – Greek Proverb.
The origin of the wood ties directly into the sustainability of the wood door manufacturer.
Does the wood come from old growth forest or sensitive habitats? If so, that company is not sustainable. These trees take hundreds of years to grow and for obvious reasons cannot be replaced in the lifetime of the logger who cut it.
Look for a company that builds doors out of plantation lumber. Plantation lumber is preferable because trees are continually replanted to ensure future harvest.
Eight Doors, for example, only uses wood from places with the following qualities: Areas where civil and traditional rights are respected; forests with no high conservation value; genetically unmodified forests; and last, but not least, only legally exploited forest áreas.
4. Design
When shopping for doors, it is important to find a manufacturer that makes quality doors in a style that suits your taste.
You should not have to sacrifice style over function, or design over quality. Find a door manufacturer that can do both!
5. Delivery
If you are unable to find the product locally, the wood door factory that you purchase from should ensure tracking from the moment it leaves the factory until the moment it arrives on your doorstep.
6. Warranty
A reputable company will always provide a warranty to ensure customer satisfaction.
All of the Eight Doors products have a one-year warranty from their delivery date. We use only the best material and services to assure that you have only good surprises with us.
7. Certification
Certifications ensure that a product is safe, efficient and high quality. When a door is certified, it means that it has undergone dozens of tests to ensure safety and durability. Certifications ensure:
- Standardization of product manufacturing steps
- Product guidelines: manuals, fact sheets, work instructions
- Standards for control of nonconformities during the process, customer complaints, corrective actions to solve problems
- Training of the people involved with the products.
There are more tests done on doors than you would ever imagine! Tests are run to evaluate the characters listed below:
- Dimensioning and Tolerances
- Visual aspects
- Product identification standards
- Product construction standards
- Definition of specific requirements: humidity, temperature, acoustic protection, warping and others.
- Product performance standard
- Vertical loading
- Static twist
- Soft Body Impacts
- Impacts of hard body
- Resistance to closure with presence of obstruction
- Resistance to horizontal stress, in the plane of the sheet, with two immobilized corners
- Flexural strength
- Resistance to abrupt closing
- Opening and closing cycles
- Usage traffic
- Leaf opening and closing force
- Action applied on the doorknob
- Action applied on keys
- Resistance under water, heat and humidity.
As you can see, certified doors must pass tests that are quite rigorous!
Doors should also be subjected to opening and closing tests, at least 20,000 times! Certified doors are inspected at every stage of the manufacturing process.
What next?
Knowledge is power. This knowledge can be used as a filter to determine whether or not a wood door manufacturer will create a quality product that you can feel good purchasing for you home.
