As many already know, metal doors not only provide security, but also protect residents from external noise and cold. That is why the question "how to insulate an entrance iron door" is now more relevant than ever.
A metal door is a fairly simple structure assembled from a frame and a metal sheet welded to it. As a rule, a small gap remains between the frame and the canvas, about 7-8 mm in size.
Some may think that it is quite possible to insulate an iron door with your own hands with a simple insulation and, as they say, not reinvent the wheel, but if you look at the issue from a professional point of view, then this is just a small step towards creating a cozy and warm atmosphere in the house.
We insulate the door with foam panels
So, in order to fully understand all the intricacies of this difficult question, we will try to tell you about everything in order.
Required tool
Before you start insulating the door, prepare the tool that you will need to carry out the work:
- Rolled insulation foam rubber;
- Foam panels, the thickness of which corresponds to the thickness of the metal profile;
- Jigsaw;
- A set of drills (for metal);
- Several bits (installed on a drill or screwdriver);
- Medium grit sandpaper;
- Marker;
- Roulette;
- Screwdriver;
- Ruler;
- Drill and screws;
- Sealant or silicone;
- Fiberboard sheet;
- Screwdriver and drill;
- Self-adhesive paper or film.
Important!
When buying all accessories for door insulation, pay attention to the foam - it must be of increased density. This is a necessary criterion that affects the quality of insulation.
Work plan
Well, we figured out the tool, now let's move on to the question of how to insulate an iron door in a private house.
This instruction will tell you step by step what is done and how:
- First you need to measure the height and length of the door leaf. This is necessary in order to then cut out a sheet of fiberboard, which will completely cover the insulation;
- We transfer the resulting dimensions to a fiberboard sheet;
- We mark the location of the lock, the eyelet on the chipboard sheet and cut out the corresponding holes for them;
- We attach the finished part to check the size ratio and the correspondence of all the necessary holes;
- The next step is to fill the door with Styrofoam panels. In order to cut the insulation for the iron door, we use a knife.
We do not spare silicone and apply it in a rich layer to the inside of the door (this measure is necessary so that the panels do not fall out);
- Now, you need to screw the fiberboard into place. We insert a special bit into the screwdriver and fasten it to the door using self-tapping screws.
Attention!
In order to screw the fiberboard sheet to the metal, you do not need to drill any additional holes.
Self-tapping screws themselves drill into the metal and do not need preparatory work.
- We tighten the self-tapping screws around the entire perimeter of the sheet. The most important thing in this business is that the plywood sheet should lie tightly, without swelling;
- Now you need to take a knife and shave off the excess edge that protrudes slightly beyond the profile;
- The last step - taking a medium-grained skin, carefully grind down the edges of the fiberboard so that the structure has an attractive and finished look.
Advice!
Do you want to thoroughly insulate your door?
In this case, even small gaps between the foam and the gaps between the stiffeners must be filled with polyurethane foam.
The stiffening ribs of the door, since they are made of metal, will keep the cold in themselves. Profile pipes and corners freeze in winter and create an unpleasant refrigerator effect.
To avoid this, it is necessary to fill the stiffening ribs (tubes) with polyurethane foam. In order to do this, you will need a drill, which makes a hole in the profile pipe. Then the pipe is filled with polyurethane foam.
Insulation of the door with foam rubber
You can insulate an iron door with your own hands using foam rubber, since this material is a good heat insulator. Surely, many people think that by sticking rubber on the door as a seal, they will be able to get rid of the cold and drafts once and for all - this opinion is wrong.
Unlike the same window, the door has no gaps on which rubber can be glued, which is why, after gluing it, there can be serious problems with closing and opening the door.
Procedure
In order to properly insulate iron doors with your own hands using foam rubber, you must follow a simple step-by-step procedure:
- The first thing to do is to unwind the foam rubber roll;
- The next step is to remove the protective film and glue the foam rubber tapes to the door frame profile;
- In the event that the foam is thicker than the gap, the edge of the foam should be cut off at a slight angle.
We insulate the canvas
How to insulate an iron door from the inside? What does that require? In this matter, a lot depends on the type of canvas - it is collapsible or not. If the canvas is disassembled, then any insulation you like can be safely laid inside the structure.
Note!
The material that is used as insulation can be both hard and soft.
The same foam, expanded polystyrene and so on are used as a rigid insulation. It is customary to select solid materials by thickness - that is, buy the same foam of such a thickness that it fits comfortably inside the door.
If you are worried about the question - how to insulate an entrance iron door, if there is no way to purchase a hard insulation? The answer is simple - use a soft type of insulation. When choosing this type of material, you should take care of waterproofing the door in advance.
Due to temperature changes, drops of moisture (condensation) form on the inside of the door, which over time moisturizes the soft insulation. And under the influence of moisture, it simply ceases to prevent the penetration of cold.
Also, when wet, the structure of the soft insulation will collapse, an unpleasant smell of dampness will appear in your house, and the material itself will threaten the integrity of the metal door. Due to prolonged exposure to moisture, traces of corrosion may appear on the inside of the door.
In order to prevent such consequences, it is necessary to close the soft insulation with a film, which in turn will play the role of a waterproofing agent.
If your metal door is non-separable, then you can use another option - to fill the inner void of the door with a loose heat insulator. But it is worthwhile to immediately make a reservation that this option is available only in simple doors, in which there is no crossbar locking system.
In the presence of crossbars, bulk insulation should not be used in any case! Thus, you can block the transom system completely and irrevocably! A door with crossbar locks can only be insulated from the outside. For this, experts recommend using an elastic insulation, such as foam rubber, etc.
The main drawback of external door insulation is its unaesthetic appearance. To hide the insulation, professional builders use plastic panels or wood flooring.
Often, high-quality plywood can be found as a decorative insert, which acts not only as a decorative element, but also as an insulation element.
We insulate the door frame
So, in this case there is one significant and important question - how can you insulate the door frame? For this, a special solution is used, which, after warming the door, is applied along the entire perimeter of the door frame in the form of the letter "P".
If such actions were not carried out in advance, then special holes must be made in the door frame, and polyurethane foam must be poured into them. Also, as insulation, you can use bulk insulation, which is poured into the previously prepared holes from above.
As for the crevices
The last stage in the process of warming the door can be called gluing a rubber or foam rubber seal around the entire perimeter of the entrance group (at the joints). The rubber seal is the most demanded and preferred material because of its high level of wear resistance.
To eliminate cracks, you need to buy the thinnest seal, so that in the future you will not have any problems with closing the front door.
The price of insulation is not high. According to rough estimates (even if you buy the most expensive one), you have to spend no more than 2,500 rubles.
Attention!
To preserve the maximum amount of heat in the apartment, many of our fellow citizens, in addition).
Output
This is basically everything a home craftsman needs to know. By the same principle, you can insulate a loggia and insulate plastic windows. These tips and tricks are designed for an ordinary person who has practically no skills in construction and repair, so there is no need to be afraid to take up work with your own hands. In the video presented in this article, you will find additional information on this topic. Good luck!
At this stage, we will perform a number of works that will be required when you are in your house or apartment. Let's start with the fact that we need to fill the voids in the door frame, this is necessary both to improve the quality of sound insulation of the front door, and for thermal insulation. This work can be done in two ways:
- The first method is to fill the voids in the door frame using soft insulation, for example, mineral wool.
- The second method is to fill the voids in the door frame using a cement-sand mixture with the addition of alabaster.
If the entrance metal door is installed in a wooden house or in a brick / stone house without using a cement-sand mixture, then the void in the door frame can be filled, for example, using mineral wool insulation, as shown in the photo:
Note:When installing a metal front door in my house, I used this very method of filling the void in the door frame.
As shown in photo (1), the door frame of the entrance metal door has voids around the entire perimeter, so we need to fill them. To do this, take a mineral wool insulation and cut it into strips, as shown in the photo (2). The width of the strips of mineral wool insulation should ensure that it is tightly packed into the void of the door frame.
When the required number of strips has been prepared, we begin to lay them in the door frame. If your fastening to the doorway will be carried out through the holes that are made in the door frame (photo (3, A)), then these holes do not need to be closed with insulation yet. Why? The insulation will interfere with marking and drilling holes in the doorway, as well as installing fasteners. After installing and fixing the door frame, the insulation can be pushed into the door frame through these holes and then closed with plugs.
Now let's look at the second method of filling voids in a door frame using a cement-sand mixture and alabaster. This method is more laborious compared to the first and is used much less often, but nevertheless we will consider the main points of filling voids in a door frame using this method.
If you are installing a door in a stone house or in an apartment using a cement-sand mixture, then in this case, you first need to glue the surfaces of the door frame on both sides using construction paper tape.
Next, we need to prepare a cement-sand mixture. We take the dry mixture, add it to the container (for example, you can use a bucket with a capacity of at least 10 liters), then add water and use a mixer to mix everything thoroughly. The mixture should be of medium consistency and should not be poured.
When the mixture is ready, pour it from the bucket onto the prepared place (you can use plastic wrap) and add alabaster. The proportion of alabaster relative to the cement-sand mixture can be in the range of 1: 5 or 1: 8, depending on what viscosity the initially prepared DSP had. Why add alabaster, you ask? Alabaster is added to DSP as a catalyst, that is, when a small amount of alabaster is added, the cement-sand mixture will harden faster, which is what we need in this case.
After preparing the DSP, we put it in the door frame and carefully tamp it. This operation can be carried out without the use of tools, we put it with our hands, but do not forget to wear protective rubberized gloves:
If the door frame will be fastened through the holes made in it, then it is necessary to take measures so that the holes are not walled up by the DSP. To do this, it is necessary to close the holes, to be precise, you need to insert either fastening material (bolts, metal bar trimmings) or wooden plugs into them, the main thing is that the holes are fully protected along the entire length of the passage through the door frame.
Often the owners of apartments and private houses have the question of how to insulate an iron front door? The fact is that although a metal door is a reliable protection from intruders, the material from which it is made is an excellent heat conductor. This, in turn, leads to the fact that the structure freezes in the cold season, and ice forms on its inner side. Let's see if it is possible to insulate an iron door with our own hands, and what is needed for this.
The process of high-quality insulation cannot be started without a properly selected insulation. Fortunately, in the modern market, you can easily find what you need. It should be said right away that you can use both hard and soft insulation, the choice depends solely on you.
According to consumer reviews, one of the most popular heaters is mineral wool. There are several reasons for this: it is inexpensive, easy to use due to its soft structure, absorbs noise well and has memory, that is, it is able to recover in size after compression. Cotton wool copes well with temperature changes, protecting the house from the cold. The disadvantages include the fact that the material is soft and can settle over time. However, this drawback is easily leveled by creating stiffeners in the door structure, which do not allow the mineral wool to "slip" over a long period.
One of the most popular insulation materials is mineral wool.
A big problem for mineral wool is exposure to moisture, or rather condensation, which forms when the dew point moves into the door leaf. Stone wool will help to qualitatively insulate the steel door from the inside. It is not affected by moisture, so it can be used even for thermal insulation of the entrance doors of private houses. Otherwise, mineral wool will fit only for apartment doors with a heated vestibule (corridor).
Styrofoam is another popular way to keep your room warm. The material has a very low weight, which eliminates the weighting of the door structure. It is strong and durable. Polystyrene does not need additional waterproofing, since it is not hygroscopic. In addition, it does an excellent job of suppressing noise from the outside and keeps heat well. Choosing among various options, you should give preference to expanded polystyrene, for example, Penoplex. It is much denser than regular foam, so when it is thinner (and this can be very important!) It has the same properties as larger foam. In addition, it is not recommended to use plain foam, as it can release harmful substances when heated.
Corrugated cardboard is used for insulation of almost all doors supplied from China. What can you say about this insulation? The material has weak thermal insulation properties, but is very cheap, which makes doors with such insulation available to the majority of the population.
Quite expensive, but very effective material used to insulate a metal door is polyurethane foam. It is applied using a special tool. Due to its "liquid" structure at the stage of application, it makes it possible to fill all cavities, without exception, forming a solid sheet. The downside of this material is its price, so it has not yet found sufficient distribution among our compatriots.
Isolon also serves as a not-too-cheap heat-insulating material. But the big advantage is its minimal thickness. The material is sold in rolls, so you can easily purchase exactly the length you need. Thanks to the adhesive side, it is simply attached to the canvas, and this can be done without even disassembling the entire door structure, although in this case, overlays will have to be made on top to hide the insulation. For this, you can use a sheet of plywood or other material.
It is also worth noting that materials such as, for example, foam rubber, chipboard and others can be used in the insulation of entrance doors. But, let's face it, the quality of their thermal insulation is almost minimal, in addition, they are highly susceptible to the influence of moisture, due to which the weight of iron doors also increases. This negatively affects their service life.
At first glance, it may seem that the process itself is overly time-consuming and requires special knowledge. In fact, even an inexperienced master can cope with the work. Having decided on the insulation material, it is necessary to remove the locks, handles and a peephole from the door leaf. After that, you need to dismantle the door leaf and place it on a flat horizontal surface. Of course, you can work without removing the door, but this is extremely inconvenient and not always rational.
Even an inexperienced master can cope with the insulation of a split door
First you need to remove the trim from the inside of the door. Depending on the model, it can be an armored sheet, or it can be a simple overlay made of plywood or other material. Most often, the sheathing is attached to the door using self-tapping screws or riveting. If the door has an old insulation inside, then it must be removed by thoroughly cleaning the entire structure. If there are stiffening ribs in the inner space, then holes must be drilled in them at intervals of 40–45 cm and through them the cavities must be filled with mounting foam for thermal insulation. The diameter of the holes must match the diameter of the cylinder tube.
At the next stage, if mineral wool or other soft insulation is chosen as thermal insulation, a hydro-barrier is equipped with polyethylene over the entire surface. For expanded polystyrene, this is not necessary, since it already has good waterproofing qualities. Then the distance between the stiffeners is measured and the thermal insulation is cut with a small allowance. This is done in order to minimize the possibility of voids formation between the door structure and the thermal insulation material.
You can work without removing the door, but this is extremely inconvenient and not always rational
The next step is to lay the insulation in the cavity. For a better installation, it is recommended to mount on "liquid nails" or polyurethane foam. All places of contact must be additionally filled with polyurethane foam, and on top, if necessary, lay a layer of waterproofing. When all these procedures are completed, you can start attaching the lining. If the old material has become unusable, then it needs to be changed to a new one, but which one is up to you. After that, you can install the door peephole, insert the lock and hang the door on the hinges.
If you have a question about how to insulate an iron Chinese front door or any other that is non-separable, then the method will be slightly different from the above. To begin with, the canvas is removed and locks, handles and a peephole are removed from it. After that, the door is laid horizontally and proceeds to install the frame and stiffeners from the inner and outer sides of the canvas. To do this, you need to take a wooden block with a section of 20 * 20 mm. Moreover, the thickness can be more - it all depends on the thickness of the insulation itself. If it is possible to weld a metal frame, then you can use this method as well.
To install the frame and stiffeners, you need to take a wooden block with a section of 20 * 20 mm
The frame is attached to the surface with self-tapping screws, and all joints with the canvas are coated with polyurethane foam to exclude the ingress of air and moisture. When installing a metal structure, you can use a welding machine. All steps for installing insulation will be similar to those described above. From above, the structure is covered with a sheet of fiberboard, hardboard or other material, which is securely attached to the door leaf. At the final stage, it is necessary to make holes for the peephole and the door lock and install the door in place. If desired, the surface of the door leaf can be additionally finished with leather, leatherette, forged or plastic linings, etc.
Advice! Use clamps when fixing the frame or sheathing. They will help to securely fix the structure, excluding its displacement.
Insulation of metal doors is not only thermal insulation of the door leaf itself. For effective heat preservation, you need to pay attention to some important points.
For better adhesion of the door leaf to the steel frame, it is necessary to use rubber seals
For better adhesion of the door leaf to the steel frame, it is necessary to use rubber seals, which will help to improve the quality of the door's thermal insulation. They are sold with the required footage, so before installation, you need to measure the perimeter of the door. The gasket has an adhesive edge that attaches it to the fabric. For this, the iron surface is degreased and only after that the rubber tape is glued. It is noteworthy that with a wide door frame, you can fix the seal in several layers.
Please note that the tape itself comes in various thicknesses and types. Depending on the size of the gap, you can choose the required option. For large gaps, it is recommended to use a seal in the form of the Latin letters O and D. For slots from 3 to 5 mm in size, tapes resembling the letters V or P are suitable. And you can get rid of very small gaps using a C or K-shaped seal.
A great effect in insulation is given by the thermal insulation of the door frame. Since its dismantling, insulation and subsequent installation is too complex a process, you can use the above method, which is used to insulate the stiffeners. To do this, you only need a drill for metal and polyurethane foam.
It is important to take into account that when insulating a one-piece door, its thickness increases, therefore, the possibility of making an elongated key should be provided so that the door can be opened without problems. The same goes for the snap-on square on the handle.
In especially harsh climatic conditions, it is advisable to install a heating cable in the doorway, which is used to equip a warm floor. To do this, plaster is knocked off the slopes, tile glue is placed in the formed cavities, inside which the cable is mounted. In addition, the heating cable is also laid on the floor in front of the door. Such a system eliminates the formation of cold bridges, which, in turn, reduces the likelihood of condensation on the surface of the door leaf, and, therefore, icing.
Now you have an idea of how to insulate a metal door and can do all the work yourself. High-quality thermal insulation will not only help keep warm in your home, but also save the door from premature failure, rust and ice formation. Do-it-yourself work will save you money and fill your home with warmth and silence.
With complex warming of a house or apartment, it is important to take into account all possible places of heat loss, since only in this case it is possible to obtain really effective thermal insulation.
As statistics show, about 25% of the total heat loss of a cottage or a private house falls on doors and windows.
1 Why insulate the front door?
The issue of thermal insulation of windows, due to the huge amount of information on the Internet, has already exhausted itself, while thermal insulation of a door, which, in practice, is a fairly simple exercise that can be done by hand, requires certain explanations.
As an entrance door, in most cases, both in apartments and in private houses, metal doors are used. Such structures, in comparison with wooden doors, have one key advantage - maximum strength characteristics.
Having installed a high-quality metal door and a good lock, you can be sure that your home is reliably protected from intruders. However, certain disadvantages are inherent in metal structures.
First of all, it is the high thermal conductivity of the metal itself, which, given the relatively small thickness that steel doors have, leads to very serious heat losses. There are frequent cases when in the corridor where the street door is located, the temperature is 3-4 degrees lower than in the rest of the house.
In addition, a metal street door, as a rule, has gaps between the door itself and the doorway, the thickness of which can be up to 5 millimeters. Such gaps cause a constant draft, which should not be allowed, especially if small children live in the house.
Another weakness of metal doors is that they do not have normal noise insulation, and all sounds coming from the entrance or from the street can be perfectly heard in the house.
Do-it-yourself high-quality insulation of entrance metal doors using basalt (and safe, by the way) can fully solve problems with both sound insulation and heat loss.
1.1 What kind of insulation is better to use?
Ordinary foam rubber has been and remains a widespread material for insulating doors, however, it is unjustified to use this material for thermal insulation of an entrance door due to a number of reasons.
In general, this is the lack of the required technical characteristics that can ensure the fulfillment of all the requirements for high-quality thermal insulation - foam rubber does not act as additional noise insulation, and does not have a sufficiently low thermal conductivity. The only thing it is good for is being used as a sealant to eliminate drafts.
Of the heaters on the market for do-it-yourself door thermal insulation, fibrous heaters, such as mineral wool, and panel materials - polystyrene or extruded polystyrene foam - are best suited.
We recommend that you insulate the front door with ordinary foam or, since this insulation has an optimal ratio of cost and thermal insulation characteristics. Polyfoam is a good sound insulation, it significantly reduces the sound entering the house through street doors.
Mineral wool, in comparison with foam, has one significant drawback - it is vapor-permeable, and shrinks when saturated with moisture. While in door insulation it is extremely important that the insulation retains its size and tightly fills all cavities inside the structure.
One of the key requirements for the insulation that will be located in the front door is hydrophobicity. Since the door is a structure that is constantly in contact with warm air inside the cottage and cold air outside, condensation will constantly form in it.
Insulation, saturated with moisture, gradually loses its thermal insulation characteristics, and ceases to be effective sound insulation. Polyfoam, on the other hand, will not absorb condensate, since the material has a closed structure that does not allow steam or moisture to pass through.
If the budget does not limit the choice of thermal insulation material, then it makes sense to focus on extruded polystyrene foam and. In fact, this material, both visually and in technical characteristics, is similar to foam, but it is an order of magnitude better in terms of thermal conductivity.
The thermal conductivity coefficient of foam is about 0.04 W / µm, while for extruded polystyrene foam it is 0.029 W / µm. This suggests that with an equal thickness of insulation, the effectiveness of thermal insulation with expanded polystyrene will be an order of magnitude higher.
1.2 Required tools and materials
To insulate street doors with your own hands, in addition to insulation, you will need the following tools and materials:
- The plywood panel, or laminated chipboard, is identical in size to the dimensions of the door, which will be used as an internal cladding;
- Wooden blocks for arranging the inner frame that holds the sheathing material;
- Liquid penoizol, or non-expanding polyurethane foam;
- Plaster or putty mixture;
- Seal in the form of a polymer tape;
- Foam adhesive for metal surfaces;
- Hacksaw for cutting bars;
- Stationery knife for cutting insulation;
- Screwdriver and wood screws;
- Spatula as for.
1.3 We insulate the door frame
As a rule, reinforcement pins are fixed in the wall of the door frame, and the frame itself is a frame welded from a metal corner. Such a design, even after sealing with polyurethane foam, often has gaps from which a draft pulls.
Even if the sealing with polyurethane foam is made with high quality, the main drawback of this material affects - the loss of properties under the direct influence of sunlight, which the street doors of the cottage are constantly exposed to.
Do-it-yourself high-quality door frame insulation is performed according to the following algorithm:
- The opening between the box and the wall is cleaned of foam residues;
- The resulting gap is moistened with water and foamed with liquid penoizol;
- As the penoizol hardens, excess material is cut flush with the wall;
- Within 3-5 centimeters from the door frame, the wall is covered with a putty compound that will perform a protective function. Places where penoizol is located are putty with a thick enough layer using.
Such insulation of entrance wooden doors is necessary to the same extent as for metal structures. Such thermal insulation guarantees the absence of drafts and acts as additional sound insulation.
2 We insulate metal entrance doors
The technology of thermal insulation of the front door with their own hands provides for sheathing the insides of the door with slats, and the subsequent installation of a decorative panel on top of the insulation.
The first stage of work is the arrangement of the internal frame from the rails. The bars are installed along the inner perimeter of the door, including along the central stiffeners.
First, it is necessary to drill holes in the bearing elements of the door for self-tapping screws, which will be used to fasten the timber. The hole pitch should be 5-10 centimeters.
For fastening the rails, it is necessary to use self-tapping screws about 5 millimeters long than the total thickness of the rails and the metal frame of the door.
After the holes are drilled, the door is measured, the bars are adjusted to size, and fixed along the perimeter of the structure.
We cut the foam panels so that the insulation fits snugly between the wooden frame. The smaller the gaps, the better thermal insulation and noise insulation the insulation will have... All gaps between the wooden slats and the surface of the metal door are foamed.
Styrofoam is installed in the cells of the wooden frame, the insulation is fixed with glue. The joints of polystyrene and slats are sealed with polyurethane foam.
After the foam has hardened, cut off its excess and sheathe the door with decorative material. For cladding the front door with their own hands, chipboard plates, plywood, laminate, wooden slats, etc. are often used.
The front door trim is attached to the wooden frame with liquid nails, after which it is additionally fixed with nails or self-tapping screws.
A metal or plastic corner is installed along the perimeter of the wooden sheathing. Also, on top of the decorative panel, the trim of the entrance doors made of leather or dermantine is often attached - special kits are sold in building stores, including all the materials necessary for upholstery.
2.1 Features of do-it-yourself front door insulation (video)
We all know that sleds are prepared in summer. With a decrease in the temperature outside, in most apartments in the post-Soviet space, it begins to noticeably colder, and drafts are roaming around. To prevent this from happening, it is necessary to properly insulate the apartment in advance and, above all, insulate the metal entrance door.
Today more and more people are installing metal doors for themselves. There is a wide variety of models on the market in various shapes, with a variety of finishes and even built-in armored glass.
If you have an inexpensive steel door installed, we advise you to insulate it yourself.
Heaters
There is a huge range of materials for thermal insulation on the market, from cheap (foam) to very expensive (polypropylene plates), and all of them are successfully used to insulate metal doors. Let's consider each of them in more detail.
Mineral wool possesses remarkable heat-insulating and soundproofing properties. It is absolutely harmless and not expensive at all. And among its characteristics - excellent moisture resistance and good resistance to sudden changes in temperature.However, it also has a drawback - friability, due to which places appear that let the cold pass.
To avoid this, when insulating, it is necessary to install protective strips that will not allow the material to sink.
For insulating inexpensive doors, they use Styrofoam ... It has a very modest cost, high density, low thermal conductivity and long service life.
One of the most commonly used materials for insulation is corrugated board , which has remarkable resistance and rigidity, good noise and heat insulation. The price of corrugated board is very low compared to materials installed in premium doors.
For insulating metal door boxes are often used concrete solution.
Thermal insulating material such as foamed polyurethane , used when insulating expensive doors. It is lightweight, has good rigidity, and is completely harmless. The high cost of the material is justified by its excellent insulating performance, moisture resistance and fire resistance.
For expensive doors, they mainly use foam panels ... They have, today, the highest rates of thermal insulation, and in addition, the best moisture resistance and sound insulation.
Modern technologies, together with the fashion for everything natural, have presented the world with one more insulation - wood fiber made from coniferous wood. It has good density and sound insulation, sufficient strength and rigidity. This material is completely harmless and environmentally friendly.
The only downside to wood fiber is its cost. This insulation is one of the most expensive on the market.
Sometimes it is used for insulation foam rubber (they are replaced with mineral wool). It has significant insulating functions, low cost, good resilience and flexibility. But its service life, unfortunately, is very short, about three years.
Stuff like isolon , is more expensive, but it has remarkable performance. For example, its thermal insulation properties are higher than that of mineral wool by more than 100%. Izolon has good moisture resistance, effective sound insulation and is resistant to temperature extremes.
Based on the above data, you can easily decide on the choice of material.
Door frame
For good temperature retention in the apartment, there is little insulation of the door leaf. Therefore, we recommend insulating the door frame. Insulation of the door frame of metal doors must be done during installation, because you can easily fill it with concrete. In most cases, the question of insulation arises when the door has already been installed.
In this case, it is necessary to remove the platbands and drill holes in it through which it is necessary to fill the void with granular insulation. If for some reason you cannot buy such insulation, you can use polyurethane foam and fill all voids with foam through the holes.
Door leaf
There are many different methods for insulating a door. In order to disassemble it, you need to peel off the rubber layer and start removing the finishing panels. By removing the inner panel, you will have full access to the voids in the door leaf.
In order to insulate a metal door with your own hands, you will need:
- thermal insulation material;
- drill;
- liquid Nails;
- polyurethane foam;
- vapor barrier film (only for mineral wool).
Warming procedure:
- We remove the door leaf from the hinges.
- We unscrew and remove all the locks and the peephole.
- Carefully unscrew the screws that secure the finishing panel. Disconnect it from the base of the door.
- We fill all the voids of the door leaf with insulation and fix it with liquid nails.
- Fill the joints and gaps between the insulation with polyurethane foam. In the case of using mineral wool, apply a vapor barrier film.
- We screw the finishing panel into place.
- We install the peephole and locks, then we hang the door on the hinges.
Useful video:
Before you start insulating a door, familiarize yourself with its design and installation of locks. Only when you are completely confident in your abilities, get down to work.
When removing the door leaf from the hinges, make sure that the balls are not lost. If you have serious difficulties, it is better to consult a specialist.