[Greenbuilding] Insulated garage doors

[Paul Hadfield]

Hi Steve and Bob

Many thanks for your replies.
*
*
*Steve Houlihan wrote : Are you asking about a door between the living
space and the garage or the door you would drive a car through to park it
in the garage?*

My apologies for the lack of clarity. Yes, I am asking about the doors one
would drive a car through.

I should mention that we currently have no door from the house
unfortunately, that being part of a longer term plan (as part of a
pantry-to-utility room conversion) when funding permits. So we are
currently entering the garage, which contains freezers, garden equipment
and other tools we regularly need, via these main (car) garage doors.

So I guess what I am really saying is that the new garage doors will need
to be usable by pedestrians too, at least in the medium term, preferably
without too much loss of heat each time we enter the garage that way. So we
were imagining that we'd either need a small door within the larger doors
(rare to find), or to have side-hung door(s), so that we only open one side
when we enter on foot, as we currently have and do.

Bob Klahn wrote :* A less expensive option would be to construct a sealed,
insulated, seasonal inner door/barrier, and to accept the limitations of
the prime garage door.  Done properly, you should only lose a small portion
of floor space.*

That sounds good. When you say seasonal, are you thinking of an
easily-removable one? I guess we could make it in two sections, and the
section on the side we go in and out of could be moved sideways to be
stored up against the back of the other, out of the heating season (we
don't do any cooling in our temperate maritime climate). Perhaps we could
make it of EPS or polyiso between ply or hardboard (HDF). I wonder how we
should fix the HDF to the insulation, and how to deal with sealing it all
around the edges and fixing it. Then we'd need a way of getting into the
garage in winter; a small door within this inner insulated barrier I guess.
In which case that side might need to be stronger than hardboard, to
support the hinges and the door, and I suppose the post for that inner door
would be a thermal bridge. Perhaps that is hardly significant in the
context of a 1950s brick and block house with concrete lintels providing
thermal bridges all around, and metal ties between the two skins doing the
same, not to mention floor joists protruding through into the (fibreglass
insulation-filled) cavity, and with the insulation at the eaves tapering at
45 degrees to a point of only an inch thickness, where I have had to leave
a one inch air gap under the roofing felt so that our newly-installed
suffit vents can ventilate the rest of the loft.

The other minor issue as I think about it is that if we replace the current
main doors with side-hung softwood doors similar to the present ones, then
the current type of top-of-door stays, which prevent the doors from banging
around in the wind, protrude into the interior space when the door is being
opened. This would mean the inner insulation barrier would need to allow
for this, by means perhaps of a cut-away, with a small insulated box up
there on the inner face of the insulated barrier (with an open face on the
outer side of the box), to accommodate the stay.

I have subsequently come across insulated, sealed metal side-hung garage
doors at http://www.thegaragedoorcentre.co.uk/insulatedsidehingeddoors.php ,
but metal is perhaps not the best in environmental/energy-cost of
manufacture terms, and at only 40mm thickness can't be enormously
insulating, though possibly lower maintenance than softwood. Quite apart
from the higher financial outlay.

Thanks for your thoughts on the subject, which are much appreciated.

Paul Hadfield
Springside
Scotland Lane
Burton Overy
Leicester
paul at hadfields . org . uk


On 27 July 2012 03:33, Bob klahn <Home-NRG at dnaco.net> wrote:

>  Paul,
> I'm not aware of the existence of such a thing.  But I said that of
> pull-down attic ladders - until I saw a remarkable Swedish metal unit that
> sealed tight as a bank vault.
> The cost, however,t was enough to make most homeowners blanch.
>
> I suspect any garage door capable of sealing properly would echo that
> sticker-shock.
> A less expensive option would be to construct a sealed, insulated,
> seasonal inner door/barrier, and to accept the limitations of the prime
> garage door.  Done properly, you should onlylose a small portion of floor
> space.
>
> I hope this helps.
>
> Bob Klahn
>
>
> On 7/25/2012 7:43 AM, Paul Hadfield wrote:
>
>
>  Thanks to all for the fascinating learning experiences on this list.
>
>  Just a private enquiry, and after largely lurking here for several years
> I feel I should know the answer to this, but can anyone point me to the
> right way to go with finding some (or an) environmentally optimal,
> well-draught-proofed and well-insulated, door(s) for a built-in garage,
> preferably of a sort available in the UK, for our house.
>
>  The garage is within the (ground-level) thermal envelope of the house,
> and is used largely for storage, but possibly for future use as a workshop
> if it can be well insulated (and cleared out!).
>
>  Our house is 1955 cavity wall of typical brick and concrete block
> construction in the English east midlands, and our existing side-hung
> softwood doors, with windows in them, have suffered poor maintenance over
> the years since the house was built, but are otherwise aesthetically
> pleasing to us.
>
>  Thanks in anticipation.
>
>  Paul Hadfield
> Springside
> Scotland Lane
> Burton Overy
> Leicester
> paul at hadfields . org . uk
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Greenbuilding mailing list
> to Send a Message to the list, use the email addressGreenbuilding at bioenergylists.org
>
> to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web pagehttp://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/greenbuilding_lists.bioenergylists.or <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/greenbuilding_lists.bioenergylists.org>g
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/greenbuilding_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20120728/1a2e4e82/attachment.html>