My next project to help winterizing a historic Knoxville home with *FrostKing was to install a door sweep on one of the primary outside doors that had a horrible draft. Door draft is a big culprit when it comes to loosing heat in your home, and it’s generally an easy fix.
Karen, had placed a towel and a dog bed over her threshold to prevent the cold air from entering from under the door. This works if you are in a pinch, but FrostKing has a door sweep that gives you a more permanent fix…and one you don’t have to rearrange every time you actually open and close the door. LOL
If you look under the door and see sunlight or can feel the cold air when you put your hand to the bottom of the threshold you could probably benefit from installing a door sweep. There was a good amount of sunlight peeping through across the entire width of Karen’s door!
The door sweep goes on the bottom of the door on the side that faces the outside so a seal can be made between the rubber of the sweep and your threshold on the bottom of your door frame.
Not all doors are universal so you will most likely have to cut the sweep to fit your door and determine the right height to install your sweep so that it closes the gap between your door and your threshold.
The vinyl of the sweep can be cut with scissors and the aluminum can be trimmed with a hacksaw. If you cut with the hacksaw the aluminum can have a rough edge so make sure you wear gloves and file down the edge to smooth it out.
If you have to trim the door sweep to fit your door you might need to make a new hole — if you had to trim off one of the original pre-drilled holes. Being on site, I did not bring all of the stuff I normally have in my workshop, so we used a wood screw that I had in my tool box to make a new hole in the sweep. It was not easy!
Once we had the holes prepared in the door sweep we had to make holes in the door, this was slightly more complicated because I once again, did not bring my workshop with me, and Karen had a metal door. It would have been much easier to drill into with drill bits!
First, hold your door sweep in place and mark the location of the slotted holes in the sweep onto your door. Then drill pilot holes in your door. (I again used my screw…which was not easy!)
I do not recommend using a screw to drill pilot holes but we worked with what we had.
We had quite a time trying to force the screw in the metal door Karen had to stand behind me so I could push against her to generate enough force to drill through the door because I was just sliding backwards on the wood floor. It would have been funny if it wasn’t such hard work in an awkward position. LOL
Then, after the holes were created it was a breeze to get the provided screws into the door to secure the door sweep. But when we tried to close the door, we realized that the door sweep was still slightly too long.
We made quick work of that with the hacksaw. Put a block of wood under the door to protect the floors and remember to file down the edges after you cut.
Once we got the door to close we checked for sunlight. The door sweeps has a little wiggle room with the slotted holes so you can adjust. Just loosen the screws slightly and wiggle the sweep down. Just make sure you don’t place the door sweep too high originally because you do not want to have to drill any more holes in your metal door!
Weather stripping around the door is a good winterizing step and easily replaced too. Karen had recently replaced hers so there was no need to replace it. (Check out my tutorial: How to replace your weather stripping.)
Next, we tackled the dark, spider-webby basement to wrap the hot water pipes. That was spooky!
To be continued…
*This post is sponsored by FrostKing . All opinions are my own.
