How many doors do you think you’ve walked through in your life? Hundreds? Thousands? Probably somewhere around that figure. Have you ever really thought about those doors, though? Have you ever thought about them as more than just entrances or exits?

The thing about doors is that they offer breaks in insulation. Heat and cold go in or out when they’re opened. For people who are trying to hit net zero, doors can be a problem area. Doors of low quality are going to be nightmares for people who want their homes to be as airtight as possible so as to minimise their energy usage. If you’re one of those people that is trying to minimise their energy usage so as to hit net zero, then you might start to feel anxious about doors.

It’s not like you can go without doors. How are you supposed to come in and out of your house? Climbing through a window every single time is not practical and gets tedious after a while and you presumably do not have the power to simply teleport in and out nor do you have the ability to simply walk through walls like some sort of ghost. So you need a door. But doors represent points of failure in your insulation.

Or do they?

Do doors really have to represent points of failure in your insulation, or is there a way that you can minimise their effects on your energy consumption? But what makes a door better or worse for insulation?

THE MATERIALS

The main thing you have to look at when it comes to picking the doors which will best serve your insulation is the material out of which that door is made. Wood is a popular choice for doors and it may be the material that you most associate with doors. When you think of a door, the image of one made from wood probably pops into your mind.

But the thing about wooden doors is that they’re poor insulators. Outside heat and cold will creep in through them and wooden doors will do little to stop them.

Fibreglass is a good option. It won’t expand or contract depending on the temperature and they can provide insulation due to a polyurethane core. So if you’re looking for a door that’ll help to insulate your home, fibreglass isn’t a bad bet.

Another great material for insulating a home is vinyl. They can keep heat and cold from entering the house, which means that the outside world is less likely to affect your home’s internal temperature, so you won’t need to use machines to heat or cool it as much.

Steel, on the other hand, is an excellent choice in doors. First, they’re incredibly durable. The others might break or bend with an errant blow, but a steel door is abler to take the impact without issue. Most steel doors also have foam at the centre and they can add value to a home.

If you have sliding doors, that opens up to a patio or a deck or a backyard, then those glass doors are probably going to be made of glass. But if you pick sliding doors with a metal frame, then you can still have your sliding doors and have a tight seal that blocks drafts and can repel heat.

Strips

There’s a gap between the door and the floor. Air can get in or out through that gap, which is a liability for insulation purposes. So what do you do about that? Do you get a door that’s so tall that there is no gap? Probably not since that would scrape against the floor every time your opened or closed it.

But what you can do is to install an insulating strip that’ll keep the outside temperature from affecting the inside temperature so you don’t need to use air-cons or heaters to stay warm or cool.

You need doors. You can’t have a house without one. The problem is that they can be areas wherein insulation can fail. You want your house to be as well insulated as possible because that’s going to make it so that you don’t have to use as much electrical energy.

If you want to learn more about insulating doors, then contact Net Zero Plus today.