Slightly unhinged

With the parts in hand, I was worried there could be another few months waiting for them to be installed. Yamazakiya were too busy, and they sent another window installer, all the way from Tokyo, to put our new hinges in. They came 24th February.

The hinges are pretty simple. Basically two hoops stuck to the wall, one hoop between them stuck to the door and a pin down the middle.

Just in case anyone is thinking of coming round to my house and breaking in by removing the pins and taking the door off, I should tell you that there are allen screws holding the pins in, that can only be accessed when the door is open. Also, even if you did get the pins off, there are plates and grips on the hinge side of the door so it will only open by swinging. So when it's locked, it's locked. The door designers are one step ahead of burglars, although I sometimes think the people who made our windows have similar moral solvency.

Although simple, the geometry of the door means that the axis of the hinges must be in the same place, so we couldn't just replace the hinges with any others: we had to get the same hinges.

To replace the broken hinge, they needed to
1. take all three pins out,
2. remove the door,
3. remove the screw from the broken part of the hinge,
4. replace it with a new unbroken part,
5. put the door back in again,
6. put the pins back in.

Sounds simple, but the door weighs over 100 kg.

I was expecting them to have some fancy door installing equipment that would be able to hold the door in the right orientation and steadily move it away from the opening. They put a blanket underneath the door, and one of them rather quickly took the bottom pin out while the other was holding on to the door. I wrote above that the first step was to take all three pins out, but in fact the top hinge was free from the door, so only two pins needed removing.

I suggested they should put something a bit more substantial under the door to keep it at the right height. They first asked if I had a piece of wood, but then I held on to the door while they fetched some from their van.

I began to think that I could have done this myself, with the help of a couple of strong mates. But they did the job quickly and effectively. Fancy equipment was not necessary,  and they didn't need to use lasers to set anything up. They just had to take out the old part and replace the new one, and it would be in the right place if they counted the number of exposed threads.

After fixing our front door,  they were then very helpful fixing a problem with our other door. I'd already replaced the latch plate, which is definitely within my mechanical ability.

The other external door has been gradually sagging, since once again the manufacturers seem to have skimped on the part. This has meant the whole door is five or six millimetres lower than it should be, leaving a gap at the top allowing cold air to rush in.

They recommended getting new hinges, but to fix the problem in the medium term they cut out rectangular shims, and while one of them was lifting up the door with a combination of bits of wood and a crow bar, the other unscrewed the hinge and put the shims underneath. This lifted the door up, and the difference to the airtightness of the door is amazing. There are no longer icy blasts of air coming into that room, and a couple of days later it was back to the temperature in the rest of the house. Just in time for the end of winter!

​Eight weeks is a short time in housebuilding

Finally we have two working external doors.

I wrote about our unhinging problems back in May, at which point they had already been troubling us for a couple of months.

The broken top hinge was a particular worry, as our heavy front door was now just hanging on two out of three hinges, and there was a risk that another hinge would break and the door would land on somebody's head.

The people who came to install an inside door noticed this problem, and we got in touch with Wald at the end of March. I'm not sure what happened in April. It tends to be a busy month. At the end of May they put us in touch with  Yamazakiya Moko who make the best wooden windows I've seen in Japan. They visited on 5th June. They said they'd try to get in touch with the manufacturers of the window, which I suggested would not work because they had gone out of business.

As well as looking at the door problems, I showed them our more chronic and less critical big window on the South, and the leaky part at the bottom between the second and third leaf. He fairly quickly noticed that there was only one point along the bottom of these two leafs fixing the door when it was closed, and suggested that adding some more would be a good idea.

Anyway, confidence inspired, I looked forward to my front door getting a new hinge, and waited for a reply.

And waited.

I'm probably not pushy enough, and I know I'm not the most active of correspondents, but I did telephone on 18th July, and he said he was waiting for parts.

I got in touch another couple of months later, and finally got a reply back 29th September saying that without any contact from the supplier, they wouldn't be able to do anything. I wrote backing telling him that I had known the manufacturer wouldn't get back to them six months ago.

So I started exploring other routes. The two options seemed to be to find another person who could fix the door, or do it myself. So I started working out what the part was, and looking for it online.

I got in touch with the importers of our windows to see if they had any other ideas. They responded very quickly, and sent someone around. But they are importers and not fitters, so they said they'd have to get in touch with the company they worked with. Yamazakiya. I explained that I was already in touch with them, so they told me to wait for them to get back to me. October also gets pretty busy, but I wrote to the Passive House lady on 11th October. And wrote to Wald again a bit later.

On 22nd October I wrote to G-U, Gretsch-Unitas, who make these and probably a majority of high-spec window hinges in Germany, asking if they had a Japanese supplier, or if there was anywhere in Europe I could order these parts online.

The Passive House lady was in Japan, and she went to visit Yamazakiya, finding out that the problem was in getting the parts. I had assumed that getting parts would be easy. I realised that when Yamazaki had talked about the manufacturers, they were talking about parts manufacturers, not window manufacturers.

On 17th November I went to visit the Japan Home Show, where I noticed by chance Yamazakiya were exhibiting, so I went to visit their stand and had the chance for a quick chat, which I think helped remind them I'm a real person.

On 22 November I got a message from MSH Co., Ltd, an authorized distributor and the sole agent of G-U in Japan. They apologised for being so late replying to us, "since the articles in question are not treated as single parts in Japan, nor we have handled them before." But they did find part numbers, and told us we needed to specify whether the hinge was on the right or left. The good news was that they could supply the parts, but the bad news was that they could only supply 10 parts of each which would take around a month to get here, and they would charge 50,000 yen. "Please consider and let me have your reply in case you want to go ahead."

This seemed like a lot of money when I only wanted one bit of metal, but at least it explained the lack of progress from Yamazakiya.

Surely there is a way of getting this part cheaper in Europe? Well our window importer spends part of the year in Europe, and has contacts with European window manufacturers, so that seemed like a good person to get back in touch with.

By now, it's the end of January, 2018.

Once again there was a fast response, and a lot of initial positive noises although it's important to remember that Europe essentially has a four-day week because their weekend starts Friday lunchtime. I think this is an excellent thing, but it does require some concentration. I already knew that European businesses didn't do August, and you'll notice that month also missing from this timeline.

Reports then followed of potential wholesalers, parts in stock, numbers of parts required, prices, higher prices, no parts in stock, and eventually a higher price than MSH in Japan was charging for ten parts. Apparently this hinge is no longer used in Germany, and as a hinge for an out-swinging external door, it was probably rarely used in the past.

So on 8th February I got back in touch with MSH in Japan and asked how much they would charge just for the hinges and not the latch plate. I could get a single latch plate online from www.slotnodig.be, a supplier in Belgium for around 20 euros, so there was no need for me to order ten. He told me that would be 45,000 yen, but stressed that did not mean he would sell me ten latch plates for 5,000.

I reminded him that I didn't want ten latch plates, I only wanted one. And for that matter I didn't want ten hinges either.

He then seemed to get a bit defensive and told me that the maintenance and replacement of fittings should be carried out by the manufacturers of the windows or doors, because their condition depends on the quality of manufacturing, and that inappropriate manufacturing or installation will lead to elements breaking.

He also said they had to respect G-U's ''Unit Package'' of ten pcs. They had never purchased or sold this part in Japan before, did not expect to sell any in the future, and did not want to hold any on stock, and that they were giving me special treatment.

I was left feeling that the customer care at GU did not care much about customers. Also this highlighted my own unenviable situation. The manufacturer of my doors has gone out of business, so what am I supposed to do? The fact that the parts broke suggests at least a possibility that there was a problem with the quality of manufacturing, and I imagine that is the usual reason for parts needing to be replaced.

So around 9th February I ordered ten hinges from MSH, and ordered one new latch plate through www.slotnodig.be, which was great practice for my Dutch web skills. The latch plate was shipped 13th February and arrived around a week later. I was worrying that the hinges would take much longer, but they got to the MSH warehouse 19th February and were sent straight to my house.