Velvet Draught Excluder French Patio Door Extra Long Soft Draft Stopper 3ft (Black)

Product Information

Draughts from outside can come into your home through gaps around doors, letterboxes and even keyholes. Areas to focus on are floor boards, skirting boards, where window and door frames meet the wall and the ceiling-to-wall junctions. The less obvious areas are keyholes, kitchen cupboards (where pipes are likely to penetrate walls), loft hatches and downlights.

The fix here isn’t quite as simple, but it isn’t anything a casual DIYer won’t be able to handle. Your primary options are installing a brush strip or an ecoflap. The brush strip works in the same manner as it does on the door’s bottom edge and can be installed by simply screwing it in place. The ecoflap, meanwhile, acts as a barrier between the letterbox and your home (a conservatory for your mail if you will) and can be mounted with sealant or screwed into place. His interest in renewable energy and sustainability was first inspired by visits to the Royal Festival Hall heat pump and the Edmonton heat-from-waste projects. In 1979 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. Glass is the main culprit when it comes to bad thermal efficiency in homes. Lots of doors have glazed panels. If the glass is broken, then it’s important to replace front door glass. Not only is this playing with your home’s energy efficiency, but it’s also a safety risk. Single glazing can be upgraded to more thermally efficient glass – and you don’t have to replace the whole door to do this.this initial burst of enthusiasm lead to him trying (and failing) to build a biogas digester to convert pig manure into fuel, at a Kent oast-house, his first conversion project. Secondary-glazing film is a transparent tape that fixes to windows to create a double-glazing effect. However, we recommend you avoid using it. It’s important to strike the right balance between humidification and ventilation. This can be hard when your windows and doors are tightly shut to insulate your home.

To make sure you don’t get overcharged for double glazing, read our guide to double glazing prices. Tim is an expert in sustainable building methods and energy efficiency in residential homes and writes on the subject for magazines and national newspapers. He is the author of The Sustainable Building Bible, Simply Sustainable Homes and Anaerobic Digestion - Making Biogas - Making Energy: The Earthscan Expert Guide.You 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. As heat rises, it can escape upwards through small gaps around your loft hatch. Insulate these using foam strips, as you would for doors or windows. If your doors are not fitted with studs, you can fix them by drilling a hole through the hinge and the pin. Then, place a set screw in it to keep it in place. This way, you can easily access the screw when the door is open. Insulating strips The good news is that draught proofing your home is as simple as making sure the frame and any keyholes and letterboxes, are sealed tight enough to keep the cold air out and the warm air in, but not so tight as to make opening and closing the door difficult. 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.

This is also true if the door is too tight and difficult to open and shut, as the extra force you’ll be using to use the door could result in the sealing being damaged. Sealing the Outside If you are renting your home, it has to be fit for habitation and it’s your landlord’s responsibility to ensure this. If your house is too cold (or swelteringly hot) or damp, then this is a danger to your health and the landlord must make necessary repairs.

Insulating strips

Once you have made your measurements, cut the strips to suit and begin fixing to the frame. Once the seal has been fixed and you’ve left in to dry for a few minutes, close the door and inspect it for leaks using the methods explained earlier.