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With a bit of creativity, you’ve probably got the materials in your house already to make a draught excluder. You could fashion your own soft cushioned design to put in front of the door – the Energy Saving Trust recommends stuffing a case with used plastic bags, spare bits of fabric or similar material, which will work well as a thermal barrier. Draught excluders are placed at the bottom of your door, employing bristles to create a seal against the floor which halts draughts from entering through the gap beneath the door. 2. What are the benefits of draught excluders? Armed with my new thermal imaging camera I start to photograph things that feel cold. I am not short of subjects. For variety I photograph the dogs. They were certainly warm, especially next to the radiator. After a brief doggy interlude I return to the serious issue of photographing the problematic French doors. French Door Thermal Image
Another important consequence of having an energy efficient home, however, is that it’ll save you money. The less heat escapes from your property, the less energy you’ll need to spend generating heat to replace it, and the lower your energy bills will be. There are several avenues homeowners can explore to draught-proof their homes. Here's a breakdown of some effective methods: Draught-proofing is a smart move towards creating a comfortable, energy-efficient, and cost-effective living space. If you’ve exhausted all the above options and nothing seems to be fixing the draughts, it’s probably time to invest in a replacement door. Look for products that offer great thermal efficiency and come with weather seals.
We have an extensive selection of thresholds that meet disabled and easy access requirements for Part M of the building regulations for mobility, PAS 24 performance testing, BS6375-1:2009 and Part Q of the building regulations 2010 secure by design. We meet all requirements for inward and outward opening single doors, as well as double doors and sidelight frames. High performance materials with stylish design and UK-based manufacture, low maintenance features, reliable customer service and the latest up to date innovations ensure we can provide all our customers with the solutions they need to help promote successful business growth and continuous improvement. Proline AM3, AM370, AM5Ex and AM5Ex70 are just a few of our most popular thresholds.
Identify the main sources of draughts in your home, be it windows or doors, to choose an excluder that suits the location. Light polyfill may be a budget-friendly option, but for doors that won't stay closed, a weightier option like sand or gravel-filled excluders might be ideal.
The bottom of the door isn’t the only area where draughts can come in. The edges and top should also be properly sealed to stop heat from leaking out and cold air from entering your home. To stop draughts from doors, fit rubber, foam, brush or wiper strips. These are attached to the frame with adhesive and possibly screws or nails, depending on the product. When on the lookout for the perfect draught excluder, certain factors come into play to ensure you make an informed choice. Here's a rundown of key considerations: Besides doors, draught excluders can also be fitted around windows, loft hatches, and garage doors to improve energy efficiency and reduce draughts in those areas. The best thing about this was that there was a simple way of remedying the problem; take up the slabs under the doors sills, seal properly and reinstate the paving slabs; far easier than removing doors and having to make good internal decoration.
Follow the cleaning instructions provided by the manufacturer to ensure you do not damage the material. Is your letterbox letting in unwanted draughts? An energy-efficient letterbox will have brushes and a flap that work together to stop air from blowing through into your home – and heat from escaping out. It's an easy way to save money at home. Many letterboxes are missing one of these elements, but they’re affordable and simple to fit yourself. If your draught excluder will be placed in a prominent area like the living room, select a style that blends with your existing decor or serves as a statement piece. Wooden French doors tend to be more efficient than their uPVC equivalents because the material is much denser. Heat, therefore, has a far more difficult time passing from one side of the material to the other. Insulating External French Doors The image above shows a general cold area right across the door threshold / door sill area. The surface temperature at Sp2 is cold at 9.7°C despite the side light area here being a fixed panel with no seal to let air through. Sp3 at 15.4°C shows the benefit of triple glazing. The outside air temperature when the photo was taken was about 4°C and the nominal air temperature in the room was 23°C according to the room thermostat. We don’t normally like it to be more than 20°C but it’s the only way to make the rest of the room habitable. When I measured the air temperature around Sp2 it was 14°C. This dropped to around 10°C if the curtains were closed and the air behind the curtain was not mixed with warmer air from the rest of the room. Closeup Of Fixed Panel Side Light Of Draughty French DoorsYou can get designs that have buttons or fixings to attach to the door. Most soft cushion excluders are simply placed up against the door once it’s shut. In this case, the draught excluder won’t be in place when you’re out of the house, so the gap at the bottom of your front door is still a weak spot in your home’s thermal envelope, allowing heat to leak out and cold air to come in. For this reason, a soft pillow draught excluder is probably a better method for internal doors rather than your front door. The most popular measure of energy efficiency in your home is the U-value. This describes how effective a material is as an insulator. The lower the value, the less heat is able to pass through a given area of material in a given amount of time. It’s typically measured in watts per metre squared. A standard double-glazed window will have a U-value of just under three. Draught-proofing your home brings along a slew of benefits that go beyond just keeping the cold at bay. Here are some key advantages: Finally, it’s worth considering the environmental cost of using all that extra energy. If your doors are leaking a lot of heat, you’ll end up using more heat trying to keep the inside of your house warm. For the most part, this energy will come from burning fossil fuels which contribute to man-made climate change. So How Is Energy Efficiency Measured? Look at the edges of your door, and you’ll see strips of weather-stripping. This is designed to compress when the door is closed, and form a tight seal that’ll keep draughts at bay. Door seals tend to come in the form of either brushes or lengths of rubber. To replace your weather-stripping, it’s best to first remove the old strips and take them down to your local hardware shop. That will make it easy to find a like-for-like replacement. 2. Draught excluders
Perfect for external doors, this weatherbar provides an effective draught-proofing solution while adding a touch of elegance with its oak finish. A bit like your letterbox, the keyhole is a small but disproportionately leaky gap in your door that could be letting in unwanted cold air. There are several options for this. A simple round of metal attached with a screw can be added to the outside of the door and pushed to the side when you’re using the key. These are called covered escutcheons and are a common feature of front doors; you possibly already have one. This close up picture shows that the side light where it meets the floor and the wall is at 5.7°C. More like an outside temperature than the surface in a heated room. Kitchen French Doors Show Similar Characteristics To Lounge The water heating energy requirements in SAP are actually calculated based on an assumed occupancy, which is itself calculated on floor area. SAP does that so the energy performance of different houses can be compared in a standard way. Based on our 101m² floor area, SAP thinks that our house has a theoretical 2.757 occupants rather than the actual 2. So the EPC water heating figure of 2,254 kWh is if anything overstated. As the first salvo in the war was fired, out came the rugs to avoid cold feet as we ponder our strategy to defeat the problem. I should reveal that the French doors have a level access sill, allowing easy entry for those with a disability but making it harder to see the underside compared with a conventional raised door sill. Our first approach is to feel for draughts around the doors. It’s pretty much game over there and then; that was easy. There are clear gaps in the door seals which are letting in cold air.
If you’re the owner of an old set of exterior French doors which aren’t quite as energy-efficient as they ought to be, you have two options:
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