Door Swelling And Lock Alignment In Gulf Coast Homes
Doors on the Gulf Coast move for two separate reasons: timber swells and shrinks with the seasons, and the slab underneath settles unevenly over years. Swelling is temporary and reverses. Settlement does not. Telling them apart decides whether you adjust the strike or leave it alone until autumn.
A door that binds in July and behaves in January is doing something completely different from a door that has been getting worse every year since 2019.
Most people treat both the same way, which is why some doors round here have been planed three times and still do not shut properly.
Seasonal or permanent? The calendar tells you
| Pattern | Cause | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Bad in summer, fine in winter | Timber swelling | Leave it, or adjust seasonally |
| Slowly worse every year | Slab settlement | Adjust strike or hinges properly |
| Changed suddenly after a storm | Frame racked by wind load | Check frame square |
| Bad since the house flooded | Timber took on water permanently | Often needs the door replaced |
| Only the one door, others fine | Local hinge or strike fault | Fix that door |
Write down the month it started. That one detail settles most of these arguments.
Why timber moves so much here
Kenner sits above 75 percent relative humidity for a large part of the year, and the swing between February and August is wide. Wood takes on moisture across the grain, so a door gains more in width than in height — which is why binding usually shows on the latch edge rather than the top.
A millimetre is enough. The gap between a door and its frame is typically two to three millimetres, and it does not take much swelling to close that.
This is genuinely temporary. If you plane a door in August to fix summer binding, you will have a draughty rattling door by January.
Settlement is the permanent one
This metro sinks somewhere between 0.2 and 0.8 inches a year, and slabs do not go down evenly. One corner drops faster than the rest, the frame twists with it, and every door hung in that frame inherits the twist.
It does not reverse. Adjusting for it is the correct answer, because it will still be out of square next winter.
The evidence is usually visible elsewhere in the house before it shows up in a door — hairline cracks running diagonally from window and door corners, tile grout lines opening up, a floor that has developed a slope you can feel in socks.
Find the actual contact point
Same lipstick test as the latch problem. Mark the latch bolt, pull the door to, look at the strike. But for a binding door, also mark the edges — run chalk down the latch stile and close it, and the rub marks show you where the door is touching the frame.
Top of the latch edge rubbing means the door has dropped, and that is usually hinges. Full length rubbing means it has swollen. Bottom corner only usually means the slab.
Full walk-through in why won’t my door latch properly.
What to do in each case
- Seasonal swelling: leave it. If it is intolerable, a slightly deeper strike mortice gives you the couple of millimetres without removing material from the door.
- Hinges dropped: longer screws through the jamb into the framing behind. Three inch. Free, ten minutes, fixes a surprising number of doors.
- Settlement: move or re-cut the strike to where the latch actually is now. Filing is faster, moving the plate looks better.
- Frame visibly out of square: that is carpentry rather than locksmithing, and you should be told so rather than sold a lock.
The bit that costs us money
Almost none of this is a lock fault, and almost all of it gets reported to us as one. A binding door puts load on the bolt, the bolt binds in the strike, and eventually somebody uses the key as a lever and snaps it. That is when we get the call — and by then the actual cause has been building for two summers.
If your key is starting to need a lift of the handle to turn, that is the warning. Sort the door and you never have the snapped key. More in why won’t my deadbolt turn.
When to ring someone
If the frame is out of true, if the door has flooded, or if you have adjusted the strike twice and it has moved again. Tell us which month it started and whether it comes and goes — that usually identifies it before anyone comes out. Ranges are on the prices page.