BACK TO BASICS Surface- Mounted Door Closer Basics, Part 2 Tony Wiersielis, CPL, CFDI, explains the types of installations you may encounter — and how to choose one over another. over “push side” and “pull side” and why you need to understand them, along with some more tips on installations. The type of closer I’m talking about here is a multi-use closer that can be mounted I 48 three ways. When I started out in this business in the mid-1980s, my boss used clos- ers that were specific for each type of installation and handed. This meant that you had to know which way the door swung in order to choose a closer; there was no changing anything around. I could be wrong about this, but I seem to remember that the closers we used came in specific levels of “power” as well. By this, I mean you had to know the size you needed, from 1 to 6, with 6 being the heaviest closer with the most pow- erful spring. As you can imagine, this required stocking different hand closers, as in leſt hand, right hand, leſt hand reverse and right hand reverse. This could be a costly proposi- tion, stock-wise, but it also required you to either carry at least one of each hand or look at each job and return to the shop for the right closer. If I’m correct about dif- ferent sizes, now you needed to stock even more variations. The multiuse closer makes life much easier for locksmiths. Now you can hand the closer however you need to, install it three different ways and adjust the power/size easily. You also don’t have a menagerie of door-specific closers on your shelves gath- ering dust. Another bonus is this: If you need “hold-open” closers or closers with built-in stops, all you need to stock are the arms. KEYNOTES APRIL 2019 n the February issue, I explained and showed you the inner work- ings of a surface-mounted door closer. I also explained how they work and how they are adjusted, along with some basic premises about them. This month, I’ll go over the different types of installations for these closers and the reasons why you’d choose one installation over another. We’ll go “Before you install any closer, read the instructions. I still read them after years of doing this stuff.” Types of Installations The three types of installation for surface- mounted closers are regular arm (Figure 1); parallel arm (PA) (Figure 2); and over- door mounted — which I’ll call ODM — closed (Figure 3) and open (Figure 4). Generally, you’ll use standard installa- tion on in-swinging doors and parallel-arm and over-door mounted on out-swinging doors. Of the latter two, you will tend to find over-door mounting most oſten used on aluminum doors. This is because the body of a PA closer is installed lower on the door and usually ends up partially on the aluminum stile and partially over the glass. Obviously, we can’t screw into glass. The reason is that the stile — which is the aluminum on the top, bottom and sides of the door that frames the glass — can be very narrow, like 2" to 4-6". Most companies make PA “drop” plates that have the mounting plates on the top, as in Figure 5 (red arrows). You screw the mounting plate to the aluminum and then screw the closer to the bottom of the plate via some pre-tapped holes (green arrows). It works, but not all the time. If the stile of the door is 2" wide and your stop molding is ½” to ⅝”, that doesn’t leave much room to mount a plate. However, the footpiece/shoe of an ODM closer will fit nicely and is easy to install, provided you have the clearance on the frame. WWW.ALOA.ORG
