Need Help Sealing + Winterizing Front Door
Hello-
I have a big/old front door that has no sill , no sweep, and no insulation. There’s a big draft when it’s cold and I want to seal it up.
Can anyone recommend a door specialist that can come and get my door winterized and dialed in?
Thanks!
Guest User | 4 years and 5 months ago
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smoochas
in General Discussion 4 years and 4 months ago
I have a guy who did this for us and the work was SO good. His name is Glen Anderson 347-513-4380. Text him! Say Elaine and Fred sent you.
colonialrevival | 4 years and 4 months ago
I highly recommend it. Like I said, the “cushion bronze” or “V” bronze is definitely preferable to normal flat spring bronze as it will retain its cushion for much longer. We’ve had some slight marking on the side of our doors, but it’s the side of a door that stays closed, and I’ll take some easy-to-paint-over marks over the drafts any day.
JohnHancock | 4 years and 4 months ago
I’ve heard about copper weather stripping before, I guess it’s the same process…
stevecym | 4 years and 4 months ago
this spring bronze stuff is interesting. i have seen it but often worry it might “grab” on damage or the uneven surface of an old door. it is worth looking into.
colonialrevival | 4 years and 4 months ago
You’ll obviously want to get a threshold, but cushion bronze weatherstripping will outlast all of the foam/brush crap at Home Depot and works even better. You’ll want the “V Shaped Bronze” as well as some copper nails and a tack hammer, and a “spring bronze + lock strip” for the latch area. http://kilianhardware.com/sprinbronwea.html
An alternative to the tack hammer and copper nails is an 18v brad nailer and just shoot the brads through it. Works like a charm and takes maybe 30 minutes to do. Kilian also sells some really sweeps in multiple finishes.
Guest User | 4 years and 5 months ago
The brush sweeps and weatherstripping will help. Also important to ensure the walls around the door are also insulated and sealed. As well as the edges – spray foam is your friend for these edges. We weatherstripped a set of doors then found areas of air leakage around the door in the wall. You may not have the same situation but worth checking.
stevecym | 4 years and 5 months ago
Bob, you are now better informed than most of the spell check programs out there. They dont know what to make of that word either.
RobertGMarvin
in General Discussion 4 years and 5 months ago
I thought I was pretty up on terminology but I had to look up “astragal”. Thank you—I’ll no longer refer to it as simply “moulding”.
stevecym | 4 years and 5 months ago
I’ve rebuilt and worked on so many doors now that I’ve figured out how to overcome some of the issues urbandad points out. for one, the commercial insulated weather strip that the mass market suppliers carry are slender. even the product dykes carries is better than what the big box stores carry. but we make our own and are able to make the wood stop out of heavier stock if we need. we order the weather strip and make these up here in lengths to suit. also, if a nice, wood stop weather strip will not close a slightly wide gap, say at the lower part of the door because that wall has pulled away a little as the house settled and the wood is painted (as opposed to stained), we have shimmed them out a little and caulked the gap. so long as the gap is not much, no one is the wiser. if need be, we remove the old stop altogether and install new door stop, which we make.
i did visit a door yesterday that is now consistently 1/2″ or more away from the frame and too far to seal (and have look nice on the inside) and as i do other work on their frame, i am going to pull the door and laminate a strip of wood up the hinge side and rehang it. after that, i am going to make my own insulated stop to lay over the existing. getting into this level of work on a door on site is not desirable, but we are doing other work to the main entry anyway and will be there for sometime, so we will proceed.
in so far as insulating the astragal, we have cut a dado in astragals in put insulation in the channel, but for that seal to work, people have to push against it when closing the door, more so than with the insulation on the door stop(which is designed to give) and a lot of people don’t like that. as tricky as it already is to achieve a seal on the astragal, the insulation in the astragal does not yield like the insulation on the door stop and it may get harder to close the door as the weather changes. some latch plates are cut in a way so the door only presses against the insulation as the deadbolt is closed but this is not always the case. weather conditions – keep in mind what is snug in the winter might be too tight in the summer and may create issues. the insulated astragal also does not work so well with electronic latches as the latch needs play to work and release.
in so far as a large gap under the doors, we’ve had to step away from the mass market retailers and order our own product. I’ve found a stick on sweep that sticks to the door and covers large gaps but no one wants a dark brown piece of plastic running across this door so we now take a piece of say clamshell molding and rabbet it out and apply that over the seep to hide it and protect it a little. we just worked on some doors facing into the sun and wind at sheepshead bay and are showing some checking at the bottom of the stiles. In addition to sealing the wood under the door, i was able to make a wider cap to go over the sweep and hide the damage.
it took a lot of time for me to learn how to do these things and this kind of “door tune up” stuff i talk about did not come first. We were rebuilding doors and as i worked on those and the installations, i learned the nuances and then learned how to address the other problems to the point that I realized there was a market for on site work and only in the last two years i began performing on site service.
also, for anyone wishing to do this yourself, stay out of the big box stores. the products they sell are cheap and mass market and designed for newer homes where everything lines up. if you are going to work on an old house, you have to scratch around a little to find the stuff that works.
Steve
www.thetinkerswagon.com
hkapstein | 4 years and 5 months ago
Many houses, especially those built before about 1890 have double interior vestibule doors too though. It’s not so hard to weatherproof, but what I’ve seen over the years is that these problems tend to be related to the door frame being out of square other operational issues with the door rather than the condition of the weatherstripping. On double doors you can use meeting stiles, or weathersrip the astragal. You can weatherstrip the stops on the jamb and put sweeps on the bottom of the doors, but only if the door is reasonably square and plumb. It won’t be perfect, and this is why I’d weatherstrip both the inner and out doors, but depending on the situation and condition of the doors, it may be better to focus on just one set of doors. The weatherstripping is basically useless if air can go around it, so it doesn’t do much good to weatherstrip the stops if there’s a 1 inch gap under the door for example.
stevecym | 4 years and 5 months ago
i do this all the time for people but am too busy now to take on anything else, even small jobs and it may be that way until January or so.
i don’t recommend doing the outside door as they are a bit tricky being two individual doors, but i often apply insulated stop and a sweep on the inner vestibule door. Works very well. the products we use have wood on them as opposed to the crap you find in the big box stores – metal strips. the seal we use comes not only in white but brown to better match the darker colors on the older houses. we used to purchase these items in retail (dykes carries the insulated stop the hardware store near me stocks the wood topped sweeps for me; harrys in middle village if you wish to do this yourself) but we could not find the lengths we needed for the taller doors and widths for the sweeps (we called the manufacturer about this, randall products in Newark and they were not interested) so we now make our own.
www.thetinkerswagon.com
cate | 4 years and 5 months ago
If it’s big old double entry doors, the door sits on top of the sill, the sweep is on the bottom of the door attached to the inside core of the door, and you will definitely need some molding on the outside of the door surrounding it on the sides and top and overlapping the doors by about half or three-quarters of an inch or so (I forget the dimensions). The molding keeps the air out. If you can see daylight anywhere around, under, or on top of the the door, then air is coming in. You want it to be completely dark and air tight. No need for insulation as far as I know. Check where air is coming in and see what you might be able to do. Sometimes it’s an easy fix — we have a temporary little hole under the astragal and we just put a soft wad of paper such as piece of paper towel in there for now and it stays in position and keeps out the drafts. Also check for holes around hardware and that kind of thing. Hopefully you have an interior entry door as well since the vestibule will usually be a bit chilly even with a good fitting door.
hkapstein | 4 years and 5 months ago
If you and youtube can’t do it, you probably need a carpenter.