The Hammer & Hand woodshop in Portland has a new addition to its high performance door portfolio. The door, designed in a traditional style, breaks the conventional modern mold of high performance doors.
“It’s definitely the least contemporary type of Passive House door that we’ve built so far,” said H&H Woodshop Manager Dan Palmer of the door, built for a client in Minnesota. (To see examples of other Passive House doors, visit our custom high performance doors page).
Built by H&H’s craftspeople, our high performance doors meet stringent thermal performance requirements (which is important in places like Minnesota, where it is currently 1º – brrr!). Check out the photos below to get a glimpse at the process of crafting this unique custom door.
Photography by Jeff Tan.
Veteran H&H carpenter James Fox fine tunes the raised panels with a block plane.
H&H Woodshop Manager Dan Palmer applies West System Epoxy into the mortises of a door stile (above) and the loose tenons of the lock rail (below). The loose tenons are what give the door much of its strength.
Neoprene gasketing (the black strips) insures a proper air seal and allows the floating raised panels to expand and contract naturally as the seasons change.
The door stile is joined to the top, lock, and kick rails.
Two inches of polyiso insulation is glued between the raised panels to provide the door with high thermal resistance. The panels are clamped together with cauls as the glue dries.
The door, made of engineered stave core cherry, is finished with a custom stain and clear coated with three coats of Rudd Prothane (a clear exterior product designed for doors and windows). This double in-swing door stands six feet wide, eight feet tall, and four inches thick.
The traditional arched rail and panel double entry doors look like they could open up into a European villa, but perform as though they lead into a Passive House.
The door locks and creates an airtight seal using a Hoppe HLS9000 multipoint lock system with top and bottom shootbolts in both door leaves. Door hardware is Emtek’s Concord Style 2″ x 10″ Keyed.
The Hammer & Hand woodshop combines 20 years of woodworking experience with high performance building expertise to build custom doors in a variety of design aesthetics. Check out this custom high performance door client review post for a look at a modern style door.
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