Eco friendly doors
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Modest recycled craft paper is all that goes into the sturdy door that boasts structural strength, corrosion resistance and thermal efficiency
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Photo: K. Murali Kumar
Innovative: Honeycomb doors, popular in Europe, use only 20 per cent of the wood used in normal doors.
Call them environment-friendly doors, earthquake-responsive doors or thermal-efficient doors…these honeycomb doors (called V3 Dorz) manufactured by V3 Engineers, open up to a whole lot of progressive ideas. There are many points that differentiate them from normal doors, although they look pretty much the same for a normal eye.
The rectangular shutter frame of the door is made of MDF or solid timber with red meranti, rubber wood, pine or the wood of your choice, but the body, instead of solid core timber, contains a honey-comb structure made out of recycled craft paper.
This honeycomb that is in a compressed form is spread out with an expander which helps get rid of the inherent moisture, even as the expanded hexagonal structure is cut into the required size that sits snugly into the shutter frame.
Special wrap
A specialised polyurethane glue later enables the honeycomb bond itself to an outer cover which could be either acrylic, laminate, PVC, MDF or plywood on either side that is professionally done by passing it through a roller for the so-called ‘clothing’ of the honeycomb. The basic door is ready, but the other things that have to be put in place are the door frame, hinges, locks and handle that is provided by V3 Engineers as a complete solution.
Says Guru Prasad, Director, V3 Engineers, “The load-bearing capacity of the honeycomb structure isn’t anything new and we all know that honeycomb concepts in aluminium or an alloy are part of aircraft and railway coach manufacturing too. In V3 Dorz, one can even stand on the craft-paper honeycomb and test its pressure-withstanding capability, just as its light weight too comes into focus compared to hard core wood which only adds to the mass load. So, in internal doors and windows, one needn’t look for hard-core solid timber and be a party to wasting precious wood cover. Honeycomb doors use only 20 per cent of the wood used in normal doors, as the rest is paper weight.
This makes it possible for these novel doors to be 70 per cent lesser in density. Aren’t we directly preventing deforestation?”
Honeycomb in doors has been a concept widely used in the whole of Europe for more than three decades, says Guru Prasad.
V3 Dorz can be used as internal doors and the concept can be taken across to windows and any kind of flat surface application in furniture like the dining and study tables. “Its light-weight feature is a boon for earthquake-prone areas. We have now started recommending the V3 honeycomb material for bringing in pre-fabricated walls in combination with gypsum boards too as it is resistant to changing weather conditions with its excellent thermal insulation properties due to its hollowness,” says Guru Prasad.
Ranjani Govind,
Bangalore.
