Now that autumn is well and truly underway and winter will soon be here, our thoughts have turned to making our home as warm and energy efficient as possible. One of the first things to do is to hunt down and stop any draught getting into the house!
Plugging The Draught Gap
Our house has an integral garage with an up-and-over door. This means we also have another conventional door that leads from the garage into our hallway. Our hallway has always been noticeably cooler than the rest of the house and it didn’t take a genius to work out that the reason for the difference in temperature – almost a full 2°c – was the 18mm (3/4″) gap at the bottom of the garage door.
The gap was large enough to allow leaves and rain to blow under the door and inside the garage.
The Remedy
After doing some research online it seemed the only course of action was to drill the bottom of the garage door and fit some brush bar draught excluders. Although these are not hugely expensive, somewhere between £10-£20, we didn’t relish the idea of drilling into the door. So Brian put his thinking head on!
Next day he had come up with a solution to stop the draught in its tracks.
A quick visit to our local diy store provided the easiest of remedies in the form of pipe insulation. This is normally used to insulate water pipes. It is made from a fairly rigid foam material. It is lightweight and does not absorb water.
As our garage door is 2.1 metres wide we had to buy three x 1 metre lengths but at only 92p for each 1 metre piece it was hardly going to break the bank!
We used the 22mm (diameter) x 13mm (foam thickness) size.
Fitting
To make life easier the pipe insulation is already part cut but you just need to finish off with a sharp knife to cut right through the foam to the centre, as shown here:
We used a sharp Stanley knife but later found that a serrated knife, such as a bread knife worked just as well.
Once it was prepared, the insulation was ready to be fitted onto the garage door.
It was simply done by slipping the foam onto the bottom edge of the garage door like this:
It can be done with the garage door open or closed:
Two of the 1 metre lengths slipped on quickly and easily then all we had to do was cut a small piece from the remaining length (the bread knife was perfect for this!) to fill the 10cm (4″) gap the remained.
We opted to put the small section of foam in the centre of the door with the longer pieces on either side.
This ensured that the small piece would stay in place with the larger pieces to butt up against it.
No More Draught!
All in all this took no more than a few minutes. The result was evident immediately – the draught was gone!
To be honest, when Brian came up with this idea to plug the gap under the garage door I was fairly sceptical.
I didn’t think the foam would grip onto the door very well – it does!
I thought that we’d be forever having to put the foam back onto the door whenever we opened it – it hasn’t fallen off once!
The garage door still opens and closes easily. The foam conforms to the slight irregularities in the floor perfectly. This makes sure that all of the draughts are blocked out.
Most importantly the temperature in the hallway has risen in line with the rest of the house. A great result!
So, if you need a quick and easy solution to your draughty garage door, give this a try!
If you do, I’d love to hear about it. Add a comment below or post a picture to our Facebook Page
Hi thanks for this awesome tip I just had mine installed today and it worked perfectly. Kudos to you and yours.
Hi Dee. It’s so good to hear that this simple, budget solution has worked for you, thanks for taking the time to leave a comment with your positive experience.
Donna
Hi, I came across your posting and thought it was a genius idea. I went out and bought 2 rolls of the insulation form and installed it on my new build garage door and it has stopped the draught and leaves coming into the space. Thank you for sharing these great ideas, to your good health and prosperity. Lily
Hi Donna, this info might help Nina, you can get 22mmx9mm pipe lagging.
Andy
Thanks so much for that Andy, I hope Nina sees it and can make this simple solution for plugging the draughts work for her garage door 👍😊
Hi been looking for years to fill space at bottom of garage door had some pipe insolation tried it worked perfectly only had 1 foot peace to try now going to B&Q to buy four 1 metre lengths for less than £8 thank you very much.
Best regards
Allan Pirrie (Scotland)
Hi Allen, thanks so much for taking the time to leave a comment!
I’m so pleased to hear that this quick and economic solution to a very common problem has worked for you.
We put the pipe insulation on our garage door in 2017 so it’s been in place for 6 years and it’s as good now as it was in the beginning so just fit and forget!
Donna
Didn’t work for me sadly. I had high hopes, fitted under the door beautifully and then too bulky to close. Back to the drawing board…😩
So sorry to hear this simple solution didn’t work for you Nina 😞
I hope you can find another way to block out those pesky draughts from under your garage door
Donna
Great! We’ve had this on our garage door since November last year and it’s made a terrific difference. Even with the really bad weather we had (aka ‘The Beast From The East!!) the foam is as good as new so I’ll look forward to hearing how it goes with you.
Thanks for taking the time to comment – very much appreciated ?