Exterior door weatherproofing - How to better seal gap below door?
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Exterior door weatherproofing - How to better seal gap below door?
I want to replace the weatherstripping in a steel faced/wood framed exterior door. It's hung in a standard frame with a kerf along the doorstops to bed the insulation strips into. The current insulation is in rough shape and has been painted over. You can feel minor drafts near the latch, the deadbolt, and the bottom hinge-side corner, and there is a more pronounced breeze near the bottom latch-side corner. When I examined that last area, I realized that there's quite a gap between the raised threshold piece that butts against the door sweep, and the face of the current weatherstripping:
When closed, the door rests against the face of the magnetic seal, but this gap is beneath the end of the sweep - which doesn't seem to have much of a seal against the side of the frame, even with the nylon corner inserts.
I compared it to the door on the other side of the house, which is similar, if not identical, and this gap does not exist. Everything seems to be aligned on both doors though, I can't see how this would be unless the other door is thinner (so its outside face doesn't stick out past the threshold piece.)
What can I do about this? And does anyone know if the raised threshold piece is replaceable? No hardware store seems to have anything like it, and the complete thresholds they sell are much smaller than the current ones.
Thanks for looking.
When closed, the door rests against the face of the magnetic seal, but this gap is beneath the end of the sweep - which doesn't seem to have much of a seal against the side of the frame, even with the nylon corner inserts.
I compared it to the door on the other side of the house, which is similar, if not identical, and this gap does not exist. Everything seems to be aligned on both doors though, I can't see how this would be unless the other door is thinner (so its outside face doesn't stick out past the threshold piece.)
What can I do about this? And does anyone know if the raised threshold piece is replaceable? No hardware store seems to have anything like it, and the complete thresholds they sell are much smaller than the current ones.
Thanks for looking.
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The sweep is a standard shoe type that slips over the door. I have a new bulb-type sweep, which is as close as I could find to the old one, except the bulbs are round rather than rectangular. There is no real play in the hinges.
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The new sweep should eliminate the gap, at the bottom. Are the vertical spaces on each side of the door, the same from top to bottom? Try to tighten the hinges anyway.