How to choose sealant for door
The contents
Such is the nature of all home doors and air vents – they are impossible to fabricate and install into the frame without gaps, the presence of the latter ensures the proper fit of the door body in floor heating. Some, made of solid, allow installation and use without the door seals. But, as a rule, expensive copies of manual work. In such instances no additional seals in the design speaks to the high class workmanship and fit. Simple and affordable options, without the sealant to do more complicated, cracks in the lower part can reach 10mm and more.
On the specifics of tasks are distinguished:
- Sealer for interior doors, designed to reduce the flow of air between rooms of a house or apartment;
- Seal entrance doors that are used to «the defensive» from the influence of the outer conditions of a street or an entrance;
- Brush the sealer for specific door designs.
Get rid of the errors in the use of the seal ↑
What does the presence or absence of a sealant of doors. Entrance to the apartment or house should be not just strong doors, and as a tight-fitting design with guaranteed protection from moisture, rain, smells of the entrance or street.
The other main item is, of course, suppression of any drafts and related heat loss. To this end, the weatherstrip metal doors always use tape, rubber based, or silicone-type comb, the most efficient space-filling cracks around the perimeter lucky.
Of interest to compare the opinions of people who have neighbors who like to smoke on the landing, and set the seal for the front door. In most cases, a small work solves a sore point. Moreover, to install self-adhesive sealer for metal doors can even a high school student, not to mention adults.
Requirements for sealants for different areas ↑
For interior doors, it is assumed the use of simple and durable options of sealer. Any house or apartment if it is certainly not a Studio or «single room», divided into specific isolated functional zones – kitchen, hallway, toilet or bathroom, and finally bedroom and living room.
For the latter two areas the main requirement for the method of sealing the cracks will be to ensure good acoustic and thermal insulation. It is clear that the seal with high performance should be used in the design with suitable resistance to sound and heat loss.
Most stringent are the requirements for the seal for the door of the kitchen, toilet and bath. The first two are more likely to become sources of odors in these spaces is always high ventilation.
In the bathroom a good seal, and will save you health. It in the doorway of the bathroom the large cracks through which always tightens the draught, capable of causing colds in humans, has just taken a bath or shower.
Seals for interior doors ↑
Interior doors don’t require this quality seal as the input, but I use them often on the order than the input, and hence the wear resistance of such seals should be higher. The most popular material for interior doors – polyurethane foam. It is hardy, very resistant to abrasion and much softer rubber or silicone. Particularly popular among the settlers sealer Company Schlegel under the brand name Q-Lon foam polymer. In the post-Soviet space firm known as a manufacturer of quality sealing for Windows and doors.
Advertising brochures the company guarantees trouble-free operation for decades without the loss of elastic qualities, colors and sizes. For making use of polyurethane, are well known in the recent past, as the material of the soles year old semi-sports shoes.
Unlike polyurethane rubber seal requires much more pressing efforts to secure the necessary compression of the material in a working condition. So, the door design needs to be more powerful and hard. It is not always the flap closes gently and unstressed, especially in summer, by an open window or balcony. The absorptive capacity of the seal for Windows and doors is higher than the polyurethane option. Heavy doors of solid wood with strong push-lock is better to use a more rigid seal. For a simple and easier «Canadians» lightweight design suitable sealer for wooden doors made of polyurethane.
The same applies to Windows, especially if drainage of rain water is made insufficient, and the rain beat on the glass storm flows. Rubber is guaranteed to stop moisture, which is not always possible to expect from other materials.
There is a widespread belief that the seal on the door, should help to compensate for errors during installation and adjustment of lock and latch. Spring loaded door should not slam against drops in air pressure or draft. That is true but life and the resource of the seal such «wrong» doors are guaranteed to be reduced at times.
Most silicone rubber and a tubular sealing material movable wings, as well as polyurethane articles, are mounted in the door of the array without the use of adhesive, using the special roller together. The disadvantage is that the installation seal for wood construction requires the implementation of a groove on the perimeter of the end surface of the size of the mounting bases of the cord seal. However, if you have a wooden interior door without a groove for the seal – it is easy to do yourself. It’s enough to:
- Remove the doors from the hinges;
- Mark with a pencil, and a metre rule along the perimeter of the end surface of the door line to cut future groove;
- Using a router to cut the groove under the mounting belt cord. At this, the electric tool can be hired to do the job in a matter of hours without any extra costs.
- Roller to drive the sealing material into the groove.
In the aluminum or plastic door design that does not have at the end of this groove, set the gasket will be problematic.
Automatic and brush seals threshold ↑
If the design of the entrance door has no threshold, providing overlapping slit in the bottom of the door, use automatic or brush gaskets.
Auto seal has a built-in mechanism that pushes a rubber or plastic edge to the floor and thereby compensating the gap between the bottom edge and the floor surface. This device is a box-like lining in the bottom of the base door.
More simple and cheap option for door systems special design glass, sliding, carousel is brilliant, in fact, a decision. The gap between the door edge and the floor surface is closed by a set of short polypropylene bristles. The design of the brush gasket has several advantages over the automatic system:
- The simplicity and reliability of design;
- Easy to clean and maintained even in conditions of heavy soiling of the floor surface;
- Most effectively prevents entry into the room of the finest of street dust.
Among the disadvantages of the brush variant can be significantly lower efficiency in terms of frost, reduced thermal insulation properties and ability to retain odors.