The months of October and November 2011 are undoubtedly going to go down in the history books as having some of the most extreme Fall snow storms to hit the United States in a hundred years.
Living here in Denver, Colorado we seem to get the first stages of the cold weather as it comes down off of the Rocky Mountains. It takes about two days to travel eastward towards the east coast of the U.S. but it eventually gets to the major cities on the Atlantic. Northeastern cities in New Jersey and and Connecticut are still struggling to get power back on from downed power lines, and already another snow storm has brewed up in Colorado. Hard times indeed!
Whether or not you still have power, maintaining the internal heat of your home is essential, either to keep down heating costs or in the worst case of scenarios, to stay alive.
While throwing down some insulation in your attic is fairly easy, and putting some extra caulking or weather stripping along your windows doesn’t impair the use of them in the summer, your external doorways are another matter. As good as your fitting might be, there are almost always cracks between your doors edges and the frame of the wall. If the fitting was too tight, it would be incredibly difficult to open and use your doorway.
When faced with a sudden and severe winter storm, you can take a few simple precautions to help minimize the loss of heat through your doorway, and hopefully keep your heating costs as low as possible. Lost heat is wasted heat!
What you need to do:
- Wave your hand around the edges of your door to check for cold air drafting inside.
- Put a blanket down on the floor in front of the inside of your doorway.
- Seal the gaps on the sides of the door with folded paper towels or thin wash clothes.
The first and easiest step is to take a nice thick blanket and put it down on the floor right in front of the bottom of your doorway (on the inside). The largest gaps are usually at the floor level, and a surprising amount of cold air can blow in from there. To gauge how bad the draft is, just wave your hand down near the floor in front of the door. After placing the blanket, check again to see if the cold draft is eliminated.
Next, you need to seal up the gaps along the edges where the hinges connect and on the other side where the knob and deadbolts function. Once again, wave you hand along these cracks to feel how much cold air is coming in. It’s also useful to do this when there is some light outside, because you can see the gaps much more easily.
To seal up those openings, you can stuff some folded paper towels, or thin wash clothes into the gaps. The tighter the fit, the more effective they’ll be at keeping out the cold air. Of course, all of this effort will have to be undone if you need to use the door. And it can’t really be effectively set up from the outside. So, the best time to do this is at night before going to bed, and later in the morning after people have left for work and if someone is staying at home.
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David Csonka
David is a writer and web developer living in Denver, Colorado. He graduated from The Florida State University with a Master's degree in Information Science.
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