Bear in mind that the way your door opens makes a difference to what method is best. For instance, hinged flap designs are only suitable for doors that open inwards as they won’t be able to travel over the door frame. 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. This pie chart breaks down the popularity of door snakes, brush-style, and foam-tape draught excluders, helping you choose the best fit for your home Whilst adjusting the lounge doors we spot a manufacturing defect in the side light which is a fixed panel. This will need replacing as it will only get worse over time but doing it in December is not the best time. We should wait until the spring. If you’re looking for a way to extend your home out into your patio, and vice versa, then the traditional French door has a great deal to offer. They make a fantastic addition to the modern home and garden, neatly bridging the two and creating a single, cohesive space. French doors were first developed to allow French aristocrats to look out onto their estates, and to allow natural light to permeate the interior. Both virtues also apply to the modern French door, too.

Despite the small amount of progress on the MVHR system insulation we could still not pin down the reason for the cold draughts. Having taken thermal images of all the exterior doors in our home we were still not getting any insight into the problem. Looking for problem doors and non problem doors I had found only problem doors. Things were getting worse. Utility Room Door Shows Cold Areas Around Door Threshold

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 thermal images of the inward opening utility room door shown above, as well as our front door, had similar characteristics to the outward opening French doors in the lounge and kitchen. All these doors had different designs and used different materials so why would they have the same problem? I had just succeeded in expanding the problem rather than finding the solution. 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. Draught-proofing your home brings along a slew of benefits that go beyond just keeping the cold at bay. Here are some key advantages:

If you’re going to upgrade your letterbox then you’re probably going to replace the whole internal faceplate. Letterboxes come in different finishes and colours, including aluminium and plastic. Remember that some materials have better thermal efficiency credentials than others (so a simple metal flap without the brushes will always feel cold). Always take measurements of your door so that it fits properly; in some cases you may need to trim the letterbox hole. 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. Identify the main sources of draughts in your home, be it windows or doors, to choose an excluder that suits the location. 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. 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.

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. 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.

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. 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 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 LoungeDraught excluders come in a variety of forms, each tailored to different door types and homeowner preference. Here’s a breakdown of the common types:

When collecting accurate surface temperatures you need to be aware of the different emissivity of different materials but for comparing the same material in different places it is fine. What I wanted to do was compare draughty doors with non draughty doors to see the differences in surface temperatures. That way I would know what to expect when we had fixed the draughty doors. However what puzzled me was I seemed to get similar readings on all our exterior doors. I was getting some data but realised that I needed even more firepower to visualise the problem better. To add to my misery when I visit my mum to take pictures of her 1970s Aluminium sliding patio doors I get temperatures similar to my state of the art triple glazed doors. Not a great argument to convince her to change the sliding doors to something more modern and warmer. The glass in our triple glazing does keep a better temperature but the door threshold temperatures looks worse. I abandon the argument and show mum some thermal images of the dogs instead. She seems to like these. It makes me feel better as well. 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?Draught-proofing is a smart move towards creating a comfortable, energy-efficient, and cost-effective living space. Perfect for external doors, this weatherbar provides an effective draught-proofing solution while adding a touch of elegance with its oak finish. These products can be bought and fitted yourself, but to do it properly you should either be good at DIY or employ a carpenter who can make sure there are no gaps and the draught is completely excluded,’ says Elizabeth Assaf, Designer and Co-Founder at Urban Front. 3. Add draught strips around the edge of the door