external doors - how well insulated are they ?

[Simon]

Hi, It strikes me that I put all this insulation in the walls etc., then I add a door, that may be hardwood, softwood, PCVu etc, and this may amount to a great big 'ole (thermally speaking) in my expensively insulated wall. This is especially the case in a small room. I know all insulation helps, but just how insulated are external doors in general ? If I had the ability to make my own door with a high quality finish, I could sandwich a slab of celotex inside it. The PVCu doors with that skinny wobbly piece of plastic in the bottom frighten me. Has anyone thought about this / come to conclusions ? If not, general opinions would be welcome. Thanks, Simon.

[Neil Jones]

Timber's a good insulator. When I did the heat loss calcs for my house I found that the weatherboard cladding on the 1995-built extension contributed the same to the U-value as a third skin of bricks with cavity would have done.

Neil

[Christian McArdle]

The surface area of a door, coupled with the u-Value of wood means that there is not usually much to worry about compared to your overall heat losses, unless you have a very well insulated house and heat recovery ventilation. However, a purist could still justify the cost of building a specifically insulated door if they so desired.

Christian.

[Ziggur]

The U-value of a wooden door (unglazed) will be lower (better) than your windows. pvcU has approximately the same value as wood.

[G&M]

Most doors have a U value around 3. This could easily be reduced to something like 0.5 with a 1cm internal sandwich of foam which would save around £5 to £10 per annum. Not a huge saving but if they were around and I was replacing my door anyway it would be worth considering.

[IMM]

Doors are often overlooked. Don't have a letter box and go for a Swedish Door. They make the best and have the lowest U values.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Doors and windows are similar U values. They definitely are cold spots tho. Well worth insulating if the apperance you get does not put you off.

Of course, in teh bad old days we had xchilly halls and porches with two doors between living space and ouside, and hung heavy lined curtains in front of them...

[Andy Hall]

... but look like crap.

I wonder whether the Post Office could cope without letter boxes. I rather doubt it - they only seem to just about lurch from day to day. The sooner the whole thing is deregulated and they are squeezed out of the market the better

.andy

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[The Natural Philosopher]

I don't have one (yet) the postie either opens the front door and chucks it on the mat, or leaves it outside under a flower pot.

Rural life. Great.

[IMM]

You haven't seen many then

A wall type letter box is all you need.

[Andy Hall]

Sure have.

What's the point in making a hole in the wall to fit a letter box?

.andy

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[Christian McArdle]

I think he means a surface mounted one. The only holes required are for rawlplugs.

Christian.

[Andy Hall]

Oh... But they look naff....

.andy

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[Christian McArdle]

Some of them look fine, but I'd be worried about security, especially when on holiday.

Christian.

[Neil Jones]

We don't have a letter box in our front door, we have a box in the porch. Once upon a time it was probably lockable, but when we bought the house no key was provided. Anway, we have neighbours who look after our post when we're away, and we do the same for them.

[G&M]

I've got one of those Swiss external post boxes which works well provided you don't mind going outside for the mail.

Next June isn't it.

[G&M]

Okay - I'm actually interested in buying one, as may be the original poster. If you actually know what you are on about please point us to some places to look at them.

[Andy Hall]

I'll give you a ridiculous example.

I have a PO Box no. for business purposes for which I pay about £100 pa. When mail comes to this, the local sorting office writes the actual address on the envelope and the postman delivers it.

I have stationery and sticky labels preprinted with the PO Box details. Several times a month I need to send envelopes containing documents to various people, and speed and proof of delivery use the SPecial Delivery service. Generally I write or print the labels and the post office happily accepts them and they are delivered next working day. No problem.

Last Friday I needed to send a package of about 6kg, so I labelled it up in the usual way and took it to the post office. who happily accepted it and gave me a receipt.

On Monday morning, it was delivered to my home with labels on it to the effect that they couldn't deliver it because there was no return address on the label.

This is a complete nonsense because a) the post office accepted it and b) of course they had the sender's address because they delivered it back to me.

To add insult to injury, they then tried to charge me again to send it. We had a discussion about that. They didn't charge me.

Next time I'll use a courier. It really isn't worth the waste of time screwing around with these idiots.

.andy

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[Capitol]

I think you mean "letter plates". As an alternative, we have a large box on the wall outside, with a decent sized letter plate, which will even accept full size "yellow pages". The capacity is such that it will also contain three weeks of junk mail and free newspapers. I wouldn't go back to a hole in the door system.

Regards Capitol

[N. Thornton]

unfortunately most bizzes are like that, unless youre willing to pay well. I had a far bigger screw up today, and am not pleased.

NT