Kick-down stops can easily solve door issues

Q. We have problems with three doors in our house. Two swing shut on their own and one swings open on its own. We want the doors to stay where we put them, open or closed. How can we fix this?

A. The doors are not perfectly vertical or plumb. Correcting this would require some tricky carpentry work. A much simpler solution is to attach a kick-down door stop to each door.

Kick-down door stops are small, unobtrusive devices that screw to the bottom of a door. Attach the stop on the side of the door so it will block the unintended swing.

When you want the door to stay in a given position, use your foot to kick down the small lever on the door stop. The lever contacts the floor and holds the door in that position until the lever is lifted. Lifting the lever can also be done with the toe of a foot.

These door stops are sold at some home centers or can be bought on the Internet by using a search engine and the words Kick Down Door Stops. The average price is about $6 each.

A simple wood wedge can also be used to stop a door in any position by pushing it in the gap between the door bottom and floor, but requires a lot of bending and moving to use.

Another old trick is to increase the friction in one of the door hinges so that it holds the door in place.

To do this, remove a hinge pin from a door and place each end on a block of wood. Hold one end of the pin down so it doesn’t fly up and hit you, and whack the pin in the middle with a hammer.

The object is to bend the pin just slightly so it is much tighter when reinserted into the hinge. Getting the pin just right is tricky, and I prefer the simplicity of the kick-down door stop.

Q. I live in a cedar house with high ceilings. There are two layers of tongue and groove wood at the ceiling, one of boards and one of plywood. There are asphalt shingles on the roof.

In very wet weather, there is no problem. But when the sun shines for several days we have water dripping from the ceilings. Several roofers have checked it and can’t solve it. Can you help?

A. My guess is that you have a roof leak that is letting water into the ceiling areas in wet weather.

Water causes the tongue-and-groove wood to swell, and it forms a water-tight barrier when wet. But when the sun dries things out, the wood shrinks and some water drips into the living area through whatever small gaps open.

I repeat that this is just my best guess. A very close examination and probably some dismantling of the inner tongue-and-groove boards will probably be needed to prove or disprove it.

Q. I live in a relatively new house with a zoned heating-cooling system, one zone for the first level and another for the second level. The problem is that the basement is always about 10 degrees cooler than the rest of the house. What can I do about this?

A. Basements are often cool because of dampness. Even if the basement doesn’t get wet during rains, it can build up a large amount of moisture in the air, sometimes caused by invisible seepage through masonry walls and floors.

Removing the moisture will help make the basement warmer, so I would try a good dehumidifier in the basement. Look for a dehumidifier that will function at cooler temperatures; some models don’t work well below about 70 degrees.

Basement walls that are not insulated could also be contributing to the coolness by allowing heat from the central heater to escape quickly.

There are several techniques for insulating basement walls, ranging from foam panels to fiberglass blankets in a wood framework. For example, Owens Corning has a panel system that insulates and provides a finished interior surface.

For more information, visit www.owenscorning.com and click on Basement Finishing System.