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In short: Assemble pocket door frames/casements with
easily removed and replaced fasteners. Something like
clips that hold trim panels inside automobiles, as one
possible example.
Why: Most pocket door casements are held together with
any or all
of
nails, glue, caulk, and painted over.
As a result, servicing
a
pocket door (even simple things like replacing worn
rollers) is a lot of work to take everything apart.
Sometimes
you even need to cut through the wall. Getting
everything back together - just as much work.
I have no idea why theyre made the way they are. Even
if
the things can go years or decades without needed
repair,
its shouldn't be so hard.
Typical pocket door repair
https://www.youtube...watch?v=VoOBib-BGk4 just the first couple minutes shows how stupid these things usually are [a1, Mar 28 2021]
Star Trek
https://www.youtube...watch?v=FMX9ZAD_h3g incidents with doors [a1, Mar 29 2021]
[link]
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If it's small enough to fit in your pocket, it won't be very serviceable as a door. If it's useful as a portal through a wall, it won't fit in your pockets, unless you have very large trousers, or unless I'm missing some vital extra piece of information. |
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If the house shifts, and is therefore out of level, then you do* have to disassemble/ adjust/ reassemble the door, door frame, wall, and possibly the floor. If the door rollers themselves need servicing, you still have to disassemble/ adjust/ reassemble the door, door frame, wall, and possibly the floor. |
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Bandman's** bedroom pocket door developed a personality disorder, and because we'd have to disassemble the whole side of the cabin to repair it, we simply shoved the door as far into the frame as it would go***, spackled over it, and hung a barn door slider outside. |
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*Unless the seismic activity causing the shift affected structural integrity so as to allow for complete and exciting demolition. |
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**Not Batman, Bandman. Similar, for different reasons. See 'One-Man Rocker Band' idea for more details. |
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***with assistance of the thumping wrench, as the 8lb maul would be overkill, unless conditions of * above are met. |
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// I'm missing some vital extra piece of
information // Yes, that piece of information being
what is a pocket door. If its not a known
expression in your part of the world, see the linked
video. But if youre just playing for comic effect,
do carry on. |
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oh, those bloody things. Use barn doors and don't butt the cabinets right up to the wall. |
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I was imagining a hole in my pocket that could be opened and
closed, and wondering how it might be of service. |
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//I was imagining a hole in my pocket that could be opened
and closed, and wondering how it might be of service.// |
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My brother and I cut pocket doors into our winter jackets in order to fish change from mall wishing wells with magnets when we were in our teens. |
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[+] Barn doors are nice, but they require wall space on one
side or the other. Most pocket doors I've experienced were
in situations where a barn door could not fit: probably
because no one in their right mind would install a pocket
door unless there was no other good alternative. If someone
made pockets doors that were serviceable and high quality
without being exorbitantly priced, they might not be such a
bad option. |
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A sliding door! Very fancy. Now it starts to make sense. |
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Is making pocket doors reliable perhaps the biggest
technological achievement of the Star Trek universe?
Considering how even the slightest wood warp can render a
standard pocket door a squealing impediment to inter-room
movement, how did the Enterprise handle even slight battle
damage? "The shields are down captain, and every single
door on the ship is jammed". |
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Maybe inventing the transporter was just easier than fixing
that problem? |
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// doors on the Enterprise // There were crew members on
the other side of the wall
where you wouldn't see them, pushing and pulling the doors
and making a "whooshing" noise as needed. And they still
didn't
work reliably <link>. |
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I just thought of a simpler way to do this. Make
the door itself in sections, so you could take it
apart to remove without tearing everything else
apart. |
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Here at HB, we've formed an elite team of hip, relaxed problem solvers, deployed around the world via the interwebs. You appear to be the newest qualifier. Welcome. |
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//Make the door itself in sections,// |
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Maybe you could fit a conventional door into the pocket
door? so, if you get trapped behind a pocket door that is
stuck closed, you could go and get help. |
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I haven't been stuck by a closed one. Yet. What inspired this
idea was a door that stuck halfway closed last week. I think
one of the rollers got knocked off the track, as the door was
very tilted. Took a lot of work to get it back on track. |
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Door works now but is not smooth. Not sure if I want to
fix/replace it or just jam it full open and hang a curtain over
that doorway. |
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OK now I am up to speed by what a "pocket door" is supposed to be, I can meaningfully contribute. |
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It seems to me that the problem is in the lack of normal doors. |
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Suggested is to make two adjacent doorframes. |
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Two normal doors are hung on special 180° hinges such that they can shut and latch in either of the two adjacent doorframes, each door shutting flush with the surface of the wall. |
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The sliding door runs in the space between the two normal doors. |
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This solves all conceivealbel problems. |
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In normal use, the two normal doors are both shut to the same side, and the pocket door slides between them. |
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A pocket-door preferring user can slide the sliding door and pass through, sliding the sliding door closed behind them. A normal door preferring user can open the normal doors and pass through them, shutting them both behind them. |
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In maintenance mode, one of the normal doors can be opened to access the fiendish mechanism of the sliding door. |
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In prank mode, the two normal doors can be each shut in a different direction. This means that anyone trying to use the sliding door will find a normal door hidden behind it. |
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pocmloc, that doesn't solve anything. Pocket doors are used
where there isn't space to swing a "normal" door. |
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Rollup garage door. Or even roll-sideways. |
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If there's not space to swing a normal door, how does a human pass through the doorway? |
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They simply fold spacetime and appear at a later time in
which they've already completed the task on the other side of
the doorway.
Usually the issue is some architectural mishap like a toilet
that is a bit close to the door swing radius and a hallway on
the other side.
You can usually tell spacetime folding home owners by the
state of their toilets, which are never clean because they
don't bother with them except in alternate timelines. |
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//the fiendish mechanism of the sliding door.// |
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The only way I see around this is a big weld-in steel
structure, otherwise there's just too much opportunity for
warp. While we're at it, lets have polished tracks and
fully ball raced stepped rollers. We also have to mitigate
other failure modes, when people (especially those who
lack mechanical empathy) try to move pocket doors, they
inevitably apply asymetric forces that can start to rotate
the door and make it jump it's tracks. To mitigate this, a
large shaft protruding from the pocket side of the door
several feet, possibly through an outside wall, to provide
extra stability. |
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The other problem with pocket doors, or advantage of
conventional doors, is that you have to move the whole
mass. A normal door is swinging through an arc and as
such behaves like half it's mass to the operator. So, some
sort of counterweight system would be the way to go. |
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//Pocket doors are used where there isn't space to swing
a "normal" door.// |
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I would suggest a room too small for a door isn't big
enough. Although Pocket doors are often used for style
reasons. I mean, they don't seal well against noise or
draughts and they're hard to make secure, so aesthetics is
all that's left. |
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// aesthetics is all that's left. // True. If building new I
wouldn't have them. But the two I do have were here when I
bought the house, and remodeling to change the existing floor
plan is out of scope. |
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//those who lack mechanical empathy// |
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Shouldn't there be a shaming pseudoscientific epithet for this
group? |
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Schlemeil? Klutz? Oaf? Lout? Bull-in-a-china-shop? |
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I didnt know of the term pocket doors, but now I
see. I think you are right + |
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xandram, pocmloc, pertinax - what do you call these in your
part of the world? "Sliding door that retracts into a hollow
space in a wall" is a mouthful. |
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"sliding door" covers all possible permutations, they are rare enough in domestic contexts (and usually cheap and ill-fitting if not broken) that one does not usually mention them. |
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I never knew the technical term and guess I just
called them sliding doors.Whereas I can see the
term pocket door being more accurate. I dont
know what the rest of the people call them. I was
thinking maybe builders know this term. |
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Cavity doors/sliders here in NZ. Ha, pocket door, sounds like a cat flap.
And yes they are a pain to service. I agree, large removable top architraves (screwed) that expose the track and bearing mechanisms for servicing and/or door extraction. |
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