Insulation of the front door

Recently, every year there has been an increase in electricity tariffs and heating. The owners of houses and apartments take all possible ways to reduce heat loss - they insulate walls, roofs, floors and foundations, put double glass packets on the windows, etc. But most of them do not take into account the fact that through an unscheduled door it goes from 5 to 10% of heat. And if the old windows can be replaced with modern ones, then the replacement of the door will cost much more, so it makes sense to think about the insulation of the existing structure. This is what we talk about in our article and tell you how to insulate the front door without large cash costs.

General recommendations

Since it is better to cook sledges from the summer, it is recommended to study a house or apartment in the warm season before the start of the rain and the first frosts. According to the studies, if you make high -quality thermal insulation of a simple front door, then the temperature indoors will rise from 3 ° C to 5 ° C. This seemingly insignificant difference can become a decisive factor - you will not need to go in your own house, wrapped in a sweater or blanket, you will get less sick, the microclimate in the room will improve markedly.

Insulation of the front door will not only reduce heating costs and forever get rid of drafts, but also make the “face” of your apartment more beautiful and reliable. Today, all developers are commissioning an apartment in multi -storey buildings with metal entrance doors. It seems reliable and strong at first glance, this design is an ordinary tin, which can often be simply perforated with a tin knife.

Needless to say that a sense of safety does not inspire such an front door, and there can be no question of any insulating qualities. Through it, you will clearly hear what is happening on the landing, the metal cools very quickly and passes the cold inside the room, and such a sheet of iron will not protect from drafts.

The thermal insulation of the door guarantees not only protection against the cold, but also provides good sound insulation and increases the strength of the door leaf. If your house has a plastic front door, then special tools and knowledge will be needed for its insulation. But since in most cases we have to deal with wooden and metal doors, we will dwell on them. To cope with this work can do any owner or mistress who can handle elementary "household" construction instruments - a hammer, a screwdriver, a hacksaw, etc.

Before proceeding to work, it is necessary to take into account the specifics of the material from which the door is made. So, for example, wood is quite soft, it is easy to work with it, but, on the other hand, it is precisely because of its “suppleness” that the cold bridges occur. When the temperature drops outside, the wood is compressed, it becomes denser, and the gaps form as a result, even if the door block is adjusted very accurately.

There is enough gap of a couple of millimeters to significantly increase the heat loss of the apartment and deliver a lot of discomfort to the residents. And the colder the atmosphere from the outside will become, the stronger the wooden door will be compressed, respectively, the gap will become larger. We will talk about how to insulate a wooden door a little later, but so far we will talk about metal structures, since they are most common in modern cities.

If you are “lucky” in the apartment with the front door made of a bare tin sheet, then thermal insulation work should be proceeded immediately, not hoping that the cold will not reach your floor. If the apartment is on the first, second or third floor, the insulation should be as high as possible, because the whole cold from the street will get your door.

Of course, you can change the iron door to the insulated, and many advise doing so, without bothering to understand the details. A good insulated metal front door costs decent money, but even a multi -digit number on the price tag does not always guarantee quality. If you look at the standard insulated door in the context, then its structure will unpleasantly surprise its elementaryness - this is a regular “sandwich” of steel sheets and insulation inside. And the protective characteristics of the door depend on what thermal insulation material is in the middle. In inexpensive doors, there are foam plates of small thickness (the cost depends on the thickness of the insulation). In better models, there is a foam, extruded polystyrene foam, mineral wool and other materials.

Metal door

Warming for doors can be any, and the main determining factor here is financial capabilities. The best option for an apartment in a multi -storey building will be foam. Even if you buy the thickest slabs, it will cost much cheaper than changing the entire door, especially since you need only a few pieces. To fix the foam, you must use a special glue.

Step -by -step instructions for warming a metal door:

1. Remove the door from the hinges. To do this, slightly open it, put the mount between the floor and the door and lift the canvas on an impromptu lever. It will be completely possible to remove the door only in an open form, otherwise it will come to the upper crossbar of the box.
2. Put the door on the floor or table, dismantle the removable protective sheet.
3. Inside the door leaf, lay the foam lubricated with glue at several points. Before this, foam plates should be cut so that they are 0.5-1 cm more than the inner surface-this will allow them to stay tight inside.
   
4. In most cases, thermal insulation material cannot be laid in an even layer without cracks. To cut out small pieces of foam to close them, it would be too tiring, long and ineffective. It is much easier to blow out the gaps with mounting foam.
5. Install the removable sheet of the door to your former place and fix it.

But if the door leaf does not understand, then thermal insulation should be carried out in another way. This applies to the boxes of Chinese doors, which are full in modern multi -storey buildings. They are very cheap and have a presentable appearance, so many developers install them on objects. However, such doors do not understand, and insulation of them is not as easy as the rest. The only way to “get inside” the canvas is to cut the outer sheet, and then put it in place with welding.

How to insulate a non -vegetable metal front door:

1. Remove the door from the loops described above.
2. Remove all adjustment fittings, including pens and locks.
3. Self -tapping with the perimeter of the inside of the canvas (which will be in the apartment) fix a wooden beam with a cross section of 10 mm.
4. Put the selected thermal insulation material (polystyrene, mineral wool, polystyrene foam) in the resulting box.
5. Close the insulation upholstery for the door. First, attach it to the upper bar and, tightly pulling it, beat it to the rest of the bars along the entire perimeter. You can nail nails with decorative hats or ordinary brackets using a construction stapler. Fastenies put every 10-15 cm.

Useful advice: for greater strength and aesthetics, you can make a frame of bars not only around the perimeter of the door, but also lay the bars inside, making several cells-bosses in which the insulation is located.

It should be borne in mind that such a door will take a little inner space of the room, but it will give heat in the cold season, silence and comfort.

Wooden door

Wood has always been valued for good insulation qualities and the ability to retain heat in the house. The warmest baths and strong houses are still being built from wood. But for some reason modern entrance doors made of wood are not pleasing with high thermal insulation characteristics. The fact is that for the manufacture of doors they do not use ordinary wood for a long time - they are made of pressed chips and other waste of woodworking industry. If you try to raise the entrance or interior door in any apartment of Soviet construction, it will be very heavy - much heavier than any wooden structure. This is due to all kinds of impurities, polymers, pressing, etc.

But, be that as it may, today in many apartments there are entrance wooden doors, desperately in need of insulation. Over time, such designs begin to sag on loops, freely close, dry out or even crack. And before proceeding with the insulation of the old wooden door, it is necessary to identify the cause of drafts. If this is a crack in the canvas itself, it must be covered with putty or pour there the pegs of the corresponding size. If the door sagged, then it must be pulled up or completely replaced by the loops with new ones. If the replacement of the loops did not help, and the door still does not clearly get into the opening, it may be necessary to remove the sagging part of the interfering part with a shirt.

DIY insulation with your own hands:

1. To carry out thermal insulation work, a wooden door, like a metal, must be removed from the loops and put on an even horizontal surface.
2. Remove all the accessories, including locks and handles.
3. Cut the shallow groove for the scallop around the perimeter.
4. You can use mineral wool, thick foam, polystyrene, etc. as a heater for a door from wood. But it is better to take soft material so that the door from the inside looks more comfortable and aesthetically pleasing. Stick on the door leaf of the foam rubber (you can use glue on wood or universal construction glue). Unlike the installation of insulation in a metal door, here the material should not be glued exactly in the shape of the door. Leave 2-2.5 cm of an empty place at the edges so that after pulling the upholstery, the bevels are smooth and beautiful.
5. Tighten the upholstery on top of the insulation, attaching it with decorative nails or using a construction stapler.
   
6. To make the door more beautiful, stretch the brass string obliquely under the nails - so the drawing will “sell” on the upholstery. By the way, it is not necessary to make standard rhombuses - having beaten more nails, you can weave a more intricate pattern.

Useful advice: for additional protection against drafts, beat the sealing gasket to the lower part of the door - then it will never blow from the threshold.

Insulation does not help - what to do

If the thermal insulation of the door does not work, and in winter you still feel the cold at the entrance to the apartment, perhaps the insulation has been laid out incorrectly, its quality leaves much to be desired, or it simply does not cope with the load. In some cases, the cold can penetrate through the voids inside the canvas, which were not fully filled with mounting foam, so do everything as well as possible, so as not to disassemble the door again.

Another cause of high heat loss is the improper location of the door. Perhaps it costs a little crooked, and it is necessary to tighten the loops. It should be borne in mind that the insulation and crate for it give an additional load on the fittings, so if you insulated the door in the summer, by winter it can sore slightly. Be sure to use a rubber sealing tape to prevent the appearance of drafts.

From the door it will be treated with cold if the builders made an error when installing the door frame and loosely blew the void with mounting foam. To exclude this factor, bring a lighted candle or lighter to the door and walk around the entire perimeter of the box - if the flame deviates, then the box passes through the draft.

Double door

Sometimes insulation of the front door can take a lot of time and effort, and it is much easier to install the second door. For example, if you do not want to mess with the indispensable Chinese metal door, then by setting the second canvas from the inside you will provide reliable protection from the cold.

Even if the second door is made of ordinary wood without insulation, this will still give its positive results. Heat loss will be reduced behind the light that an air buffer zone will occur between the outer and inner doors, where cold air will linger and heat up. Thus, you will make a mini-subject, which will be your key to warmth and comfort.

However, it should be borne in mind that the installation of the second door will “pick” at least 20 cm of the interior space, but this is a reasonable victim in exchange for the absence of drafts. For good thermal insulation, you may not even need to buy a new door - you can take an ordinary interior (of course, without glass inserts). It is also recommended to install spikes. The installation occurs according to the classical scheme, the only thing is to attach the seal or foam tape along the perimeter of the door.

If you want to make the apartment as warm as possible, significantly reduce electricity costs and heating, insulate the front door, but do not stop there - order the facade insulation, change the old windows and make warm floors.

Entrance doors, photo

Finally, we suggest you look at various insulated entrance doors: