Are Your Exterior Doors Installed Backwards?

Are your exterior doors installed backwards? Listen to this podcast to help identify if they are installed backwards. Often times i find doors that open outward on a home and the installation looks questionable, typically because i see the door hinges on the exterior. If your door hinges are outside then they must be the correct type for this application. The hinges should be security hinges so they cannot be removed from the exterior.

So whats the big deal if i want my doors to open outwards instead of inwards as they are designed to do? Well if you want to keep the warranty on the door i would not install them to open outward unless they are designed to open outward. This may void your warranty.

Another fun fact regarding your doors warranty is if you do not paint/seal all 6 sides of the door you may void the warranty of the doors. Make sure whom ever installs your exterior doors paints/seals all 6 sides.

Attention home inspectors: Pay close attention to the door sill, jams and hinges when inspecting exterior doors. CYA brothers and sisters.

As promised here is a youtube video explaining how to identify if the doors are installed backwards.

https://youtu.be/RXNfGy4c8fY

Transcript

John Laforme: 0:00

Buying a home? Don't panic. Just listen to the rest of this podcast welcome to Home Inspection authority podcast with me, John laforme. Are you a homebuyer, a realtor, or maybe a home inspector? If you are, then this podcast is definitely for you. So let's get right into some straight talk about home inspections. Okay, John here, and welcome to Episode Five. Episode Five topic is going to be about exterior doors. And I want this episode to be directed more towards home inspectors as to what to look for, when you're inspecting exterior doors. often times, du ing my home inspections, I fi d doors that are installed ba kwards. When you open the do r, it opens outward to the ou side. And some doors are de igned to do that. But the ma ority of what I find are not. An turns out there prehung do rs that were designed to open in ard towards the house. So you wa k into the door into the ho se. And whoever decided to in tall it, you know what, let's ha e it open outwards, maybe the ho eowner requested it or maybe th t guy just thought it was a go d idea whoever installed it. So just want to point something ou. This comes with problems if yo overlook this on your home in pections. So the reason for th t is if I buy a door from a re ailer or Home Depot, Lowe's ar a specialty Door Company and an I bought a door that's de igned to have an inward sw ng, which means it's going to op n in into the into the home. An then I decided you know wh t, screw that I'm just gonna in tall this. So help us out? We l, you're probably going to vo d the warranty on the door. Be ause it just wasn't installed co rectly. And it wasn't de igned to be installed to open ou ward. So if you overlook this on a home inspection, you could ru into a problem down the road if that door fails in a short am unt of time. And you get a ph ne call from the homebuyer, yo r client and saying, Hey, why di n't you tell us these doors ar installed backwards, because no we can't get any money for th from the warranty, the ma ufacturer won't warranty the do r because it wasn't installed co rectly. This is a situation I ha e to see you run into. And I wa t to the reason why I brought th s up in this episode is be ause I see this quite often. An when I bring it up to cu tomers and to realtors they al look at me like I'm crazy. We l what do you mean it's ba kwards, and I have to explain it and show them the difference be ween what's right and what's wr ng. And it's hard to do that th ough a podcast right now wi hout visual aid to show you. So I am going to make a YouTube vi eo about this so I can ac ually show you the di ferences. So when I make that vi eo, hopefully within the next we k, I will actually add a link to that video in the description on this podcast episode. So the be t way to figure out if the do r is actually installed ba kwards is by looking at the do r jamb thickness on a typical pr hung door where the door op ns inward towards the home. Yo'll notice that the outer do r jamb is about an inch and a qu rter thick, all the way ar und the right left side and th top. And if you look at the in ide of that door jamb where th door jamb meets the door and th hinges that's typically only ab ut three quarters of an inch th ck. The reason for the th ckness difference from the ou side jamb to the inside jamb is for security reasons. So if th thinner door jamb was facing th exterior, right where the hi ges are, somebody could ea ily hack into that door jamb an break off those hinges if th y really wanted to get into th house. So the door jamb th ckness is the number one th ng I look at when I see a do r that may be installed ba kwards. Then I look at the hi ges now the hinges do play an im ortant role in this for a do r that might be installed ba kwards because if it's got in erior hinges on it, that me ns you can pop the pins out an change and literally remove th doors from the outside pr bably without breaking an thing. So, in the case where a oor is designed to open ou ward, they're going to use wh t's called Security hinges, th security hinges have two di ferent types that I've seen so far that may be more not aw re of the one main type is a hinge with a allen head set screw that's positioned in the middle of the hinge that you can only access when the doors open. So if the doors locked, there's no way someone's going to get to these hinges is a different type of hinge with a with a male stub sticking out of one side of the hinge. And on the other side of that hinge, there's a hole in the hinge. And that requires you to drill a small hole into the door so that when the door closes, the male and female connect together. And that causes a condition where you cannot lift the door off the hinges from the outside, you would have to open the door hinge to remove the door. Another part of the door assembly that I look at when I'm trying to determine if the door is installed correctly is the sill or the threshold, as some people call it, that's the part of the door at the bottom where you step on to walk into the house or out of the house that there has to be designed a certain way for a door that opens to the exterior the same way it does for a door that opens for the interior. There are two different sills for two different applications. So the three things I'm looking at are the thickness of the jams inside and outside. Do we have the correct hinges and is the sill plate correct for the application I'm looking at. Another fun fact for you is to understand that most manufacturers, maybe all manufacturers are going to require that all six sides of the door are painted or sealed. So that means the top and bottom, the right and the left side and the front facing in the interior facing part of the door all that needs to be painted to keep the warranty if you happen to have a door failure, for whatever reason, and call the manufacturer to come out and look at the door. That representative is going to bring probably a little mirror with him and him or her and they're going to take that mirror and look at the bottom of the door and the top of the door to see if you painted it or sealed it and if you did not, there's no warranty. So keep that in mind. If you are installing new doors on your house make sure all six sides are painted or sealed to avoid that problem with the manufacturer. Okay, so the takeaways from this episode are make sure you buy the right doors if you're installing new doors on your house. Make sure they're installed correctly according to the manufacturer, and make sure you paint all six sides of the door. As for you home inspectors out there, pay close attention to these types of situations when you get to a house and the doors seem to be opening outward. You're going to find some that open inward some open outward take a close look at the outward opening doors and just check those sills check the jams check the hinges make sure this was the correct application to cover your ass. So anyway, that's it for me for episode five you can check out my website home inspection of thorns calm if you're looking to have your home inspected in the Los Angeles area. And you can also find me on YouTube just by searching home inspection authority or some videos that are quite comical actually some of my day to day findings on the job. And I've got some educational videos on there as well for homeowners and home inspectors as well. I do have a tick tock account. You can find me there at home inspection authority on Tik Tok. And that's it. I hope you enjoyed everything and see you on the next one.