Installing a set of folding doors in your home is an exciting investment. Few other home renovations are able to dramatically change the environment of your home’s interior as much as a brand-new set of porch folding doors.

For the most part, purchasing a set of folding doors is fairly simple. You’ll work hand-in-hand with a sales representative who will guide you through the process of customizing every aspect of your folding doors.

However, sometimes problems arise. Perhaps, your door representative didn’t provide you with all of the customization options. Or maybe your contractor doesn’t have much experience installing these types of doors and messes up somewhere along the way.

Either way, in today’s post, we’re going to discuss the 9 most common folding door installation mistakes so you can do your best to avoid them!

The 9 Most Common Folding Door Installation Mistakes

There’s an old military saying that goes, “A failure to plan is the same as planning to fail.”

Oddly enough, this saying applies to much of life, including whenever you’re trying to plan a new home renovation project. It’s easy enough to look at catalogs and galleries, thinking that you know exactly what you’re planning on doing.

However, it’s an entirely different thing to purchase a set of high-end folding doors, hire a contractor, and plan a professional installation. During the process, a lot can go wrong. This means that it’s imperative to know exactly what you’re getting yourself into, how much effort and money the project is going to cost, and how to find a contractor with the right amount of experience

So, without further ado, here are the 9 most common mistakes that people make when planning to install multi-fold doors.

1) Not Accounting For Your Local Climate

At the end of the day, the main goal of a home is to shelter you from the outside elements. In facts, the main reason why humanity has survived for so long is our ability to use tools to create shelters to keep us safe from rain, storms, hot weather, and cold weather. Otherwise, we would be just as limited as other mammals roaming the planet.

One of the first mistakes that first-time buyers make when purchasing folding doors and planning a home renovation is that they forget to account for the local climate. For example, if you live in Southern Florida, then you should most definitely invest in hurricane-proof folding doors. If not, then you could lose your expensive new door system just as quickly as you installed them.

The same goes for a number of different climates. If you’re in an area that experiences extreme temperatures, then you need to select low-emissivity glass. If you’re in an area prone to flooding, you need to select a door system with a raised door sill. Make sure that you talk with your sales rep about your climate and the weather that you need your door to be able to stand up to.

2) Not Planning For Home-Restructuring

If you’re installing a small set of bi-fold doors, then you probably don’t need to worry about restructuring too much. In this case, your bi-fold doors should be able to make use of an existing doorway, so you won’t have to remove or add to the structural supports of your home.

However, if you’re installing an extra-wide or extra-tall set of panoramic folding doors, then you’ll definitely need to account for the possibility of restructuring your home. As folding door systems are typically installed on a load-bearing wall in your home, you can’t just go knocking down the wall without a solid plan beforehand.

This means that you may need to pay extra money to work with an architectural professional. They will help you identify where the primary supports in your home are so that you can plan your folding door install around them. You may even need to install temporary supports while you’re knocking down walls and installing the main doorframe.

3) Hiring “Cheap” Contractors

We’ll be the first to admit that installing a set of high-quality folding doors isn’t exactly a “cheap” home improvement project. For this reason, it’s common to see homeowners hire low-quality or non-reputable contractors to install their expensive folding doors.

Unfortunately, this can end up being a huge mistake. For one, if your folding doors aren’t installed properly, then it can completely void the manufacturer’s warranty. This means that if anything bad happens to them during your first few years of ownership, you alone will be responsible for any repairs.

As sturdy as folding doors are once they’re properly installed, the panels themselves can be a bit fragile. After all, they’re 80% glass, which means that if your install team isn’t paying attention, they can easily drop one of these heavy panels, shatter it, and cause you to have to pay hundreds to replace it.

At the end of the day, your best solution is to spend the extra money to hire a contractor who’s worth their salt. You want to hire somebody who has prior experience installing folding doors and working around the structural supports of a home. Otherwise, your large investment into your folding door system could be all for nothing.

4) Not Pre-Staining Wood Folding Doors

Most of the time, if you order a set of hardwood folding doors, they’ll come pre-stained from the manufacturer. However, some doors are delivered unstained to showcase the beautiful raw wood. If you happened to order a set of wood bi-fold doors that were delivered without a stain, then you’ll want to have them professionally stained before you install them.

When it comes to wood doors, the stain you apply is the one layer of defense that the doors will have against the outside elements such as water and the sun’s UV rays, both of which can degrade the structural integrity of your door panels.

5) Not Applying Privacy Film To Your Windows

When most people are shopping for a set of folding doors, the last thing that they’re thinking about is their privacy. Nine times out of ten, they’re far more concerned with the type of doorframe they want, the type of glass they want, and how large they want their folding doors to be.

However, if you’re installing a set of folding doors in a bedroom, office, or as a porch door in a busy neighborhood, then you may want to consider customizing your doors with factory privacy glass. If the manufacturer you’re working with doesn’t provide factory privacy glass, then you can hire an aftermarket tint company to apply a privacy film to the surface of the glass.

6) Forgetting To Install A Security System

If you’re replacing a traditional metal or fiberglass doorway with a folding glass door, then remember that you’ll also be sacrificing a certain level of home security. Even though today’s shatterproof glass can be a solid deterrent for burglars, you may also want to install a laser home security system as well.

These systems will shoot a “laser wall” over the surface of your glass doors. If the system is armed and the glass is broken or somebody tries to push your door panels open, then the lasers’ path will be disrupted, causing the alarm to be triggered.

7) Not Installing A Drain In Front Of Porch Folding Doors

If you live in a region that receives heavy rainfall, tropical storms, or regularly floods, then you may want to consider installing a french drain system in front of your folding doors. Even weatherproof doors can be affected by high floodwaters or large puddles that flow into the door track.

Over time, the water can seep under your doorway and into your home. The best way to defend against this is to install a drain system directly in front of the doorway. This will carry away any standing water to an underground container or filter it down a natural incline away from your doors.

8) Forgetting To Add A Power Line For Automatic Folding Doors

Although they’re not quite as common, those with high-end homes may elect to install power folding doors. These are door systems that can be activated with the touch of a button to open or close them.

One of the key things that some contractors forget, though, is that you’ll also need to add a power line that’s able to power the motor behind the door system!

9) Failure To Budget For The Entire Project

One of the most common mistakes we see, by far, is that many homeowners fail to budget for the entire folding door installation project. It’s easy to look at a beautiful set of $5,000 folding doors and say, “I can afford that!” while forgetting to budget for the additional $5,000 you may have to pay your contractor to break down your walls and install the system, to begin with.

Final Thoughts

As long as you’re purchasing your folding doors from a high-quality manufacturer and working with a grade-A contractor, then you shouldn’t have any problem with your folding door installation. The main takeaway from this article is to remember to budget for all of your installation costs and to make sure that you choose an experienced contractor to handle the job!