Doors : Part 2 > Greener doors with better sound proofing

This Doors Section have a few parts. Since i do not have all the info & to make it bite size, i'll spilt to a couple of post.

Being Eco-friendly

I have been environment-conscious since my Poly days and all my friends know I'm quite anal when it comes to Green practices. So during my renovation, I have tried my best to explore ideas & solutions to minimize wastage & harm to the environment. In context of Singapore, where labour is so expensive, repairing & repainting a door will cost at least $150 each. Feeling guilty about throwing our old doors due to high cost of refurbishing, we decided we are going for doors that kill less trees. Having that concept in mind, we explored many options.

Doors that uses the least wood is MDF doors. Very much like IKEA furnitures, its flimsy & will bloat when its wet. Its also very old fashion & definitely didn't follow our theme.

Veneer flush doors on the other hand looks more current and have wood grain that match our cabinets. However, the least wood ones are Hollow-core which uses honey-comb criss-cross 3mm cardboards. They offer little glue contact and have shorter lifespan. So not very eco-friendly if we have to throw them away after 2-3yrs. Also sound proofing is the worst! 

 Please pardon my ugly drawing.

Semi-solid is a better alternative, cos the sound proofing is better but uses a more wood to create the matchbox structure. Each structure is using 25mm timber strips laid perpendicularly with internal gap of maximum 200mm apart. This offer better glue contact thus improving the lifespan to approx 5years.

Please pardon my ugly drawing.

However, we tried to push the manufacturer further buy asking if we could further improve sound proofing & reducing wood at the same time. But we spend hours discussing with the manufacturers, talking about inserting sound proofing foam, adding extra plywood & etc..

Finally, we came up with the brillant idea. Since we notice there are plenty of leftover plywood from making these doors, we decide to insert these waste plywood to add another layer of plywood to improve sound proofing. This additional layer also makes the build much stronger where we can put in nails under on the waste layer then concealing it with a new veneer ply above. Improving the build also means we can use less matchbox structure thus having wider gaps. This will result to less glue contact but has been compensated with nails. Expected lifespan can also be longer compared to semi-core doors.

Please pardon my ugly drawing.

However, constructing these door cost us $400 per door [while semi-core is $350].

But we justify the $50 with 

1. extended lifespan, 

2. improved sound proofing, 

3. a cleaner conscious for killing less trees & reusing waste. 

4. bragging rights in creating something the industry never practice.