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Other than windows, the main openings to your house are the doors. Installing a new door or replacing an existing one requires several kinds of skills—accurate measurement, careful alignment, balanced adjustment, secure fastening, and thorough weatherproofing. You will have to decide whether to hang a door yourself or have a contractor do it. Choosing the door, however, only requires some basic knowledge.
Reducing maintenance can be environmentally beneficial, especially if the materials used for maintenance create waste or contain VOCs. Doors used in commercial buildings are made to withstand heavy use for many years with little care; they are often made of steel and covered in a tough enamel finish. But that doesn’t mean you need to use industrial products at home. Newer doors made of wood products can provide the same benefits while adding to the beauty, function, security, and insulation of your house.
Using Common Terms
One challenge of choosing a door is finding comparable information about more than one model or brand. Unlike appliances, most of which carry Energy Star ratings, doors can be rated on several criteria that are not always the same. The only doors that are required to have Energy Star ratings are those with windows. That’s because the energy efficiency of the glass is measured and rated; the rest of the door isn’t even considered.
To offer a system that contractors and consumers can use as a common reference, the U.S. Green Building Council introduced the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System. The LEED system began as a voluntary effort to create common standards for green building. The goal has been to share information and provide incentives for builders to adopt green practices rather than depend on government regulation to shape the industry.
According to its publications, “LEED is a collaborative initiative that actively involves all sectors of the home building industry including builders, home owners, product manufacturers, service providers, and affordable housing developers.” While most of the
work on LEED certification concentrates on new construction, the organization also offers the LEED for Homes Rating System. As more manufacturers and building products retailers adopt the LEED system, you will have more consistent terms and measurements to compare.
Adding Up the Points
One of the ways LEED measures environmental responsibility is by assigning points to each of several practices. The more green practices a manufacturer uses, the more points are given to the resulting product. Three of the practices measured by LEED are recycled content, regional availability, and rapid renewability.
- Recycled content: Using five percent postconsumer recycled content, or 10 percent combined postconsumer and postindustrial recycled content, earns a basic LEED point.
Additional credit is given to products made with higher amounts of recycled material. - Regional availability: Using at least 20 percent of materials and products that are grown or manufactured within 500 miles of the building site. This represents an effort to reduce transportation costs and return to a focus on the use of regional building supplies.
- Rapid renewability: Using natural materials that can be regenerated within 10 years; this includes products such as cork, which can be harvested every nine years without felling the tree, and bamboo, which is actually a kind of grass.
Doors are among the simplest, oldest, and most common manufactured building products. For centuries, most of them were made from wood and finished with paint, stain, or sealer. Until the use of manmade materials in the doors and petroleum products in the finishes, most of them would meet today’s definitions of environmental responsibility. Current green products may appear to be just a return to old ways of doing things, but there’s much more to them.
Because the manufacturing process is similar for most kinds of doors, you can find green options in every design, both for interior and exterior uses. The terms you will encounter first are stile and rail and flush. Stile and rail refers to the separate pieces of material, usually wood, that make up a door: stiles are the vertical pieces, and rails the horizontal ones. Flush doors have a uniform surface and no visible connections.
You can find stile and rail doors in many designs. Within the stiles and rails are solid panels, usually with square corners but sometimes with contoured shapes, window glass (called “lights”), louvers or a combination of these things. Flush doors offer fewer options because
the surface is usually all one material and finish. Doors of both kinds are also made with lower-quality surfaces for customers who plan to apply other finishes. These are called “paint grade” doors.
While you’re evaluating product designs and properties, you may also want to consider additional features. For example, if you’re remodeling or adding on to a historic house, look for manufacturers that offer period styles or custom millwork. If you’re creating a home office or master suite, think about the benefits of acoustic insulation, which reduces the sound that passes through a door. And, depending on your requirements, think about the possible safety benefits of adding a firerated door. Bullet-resistant doors are also available—but if you need one, environmental responsibility may not be your top priority.
The millwork department of your local lumberyard or building supply store is the best place to start looking at the different kinds of doors available. It can also be the best place to order doors that are not regular stock items; the personal service and professional advice
you can get from a millwork specialist can be worth far more than the money you save by ordering something sight unseen from far away.
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