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Preparing Your Windows And Doors For Winter

16 October 2015

Ray Moreno

With winter weather right around the corner, you may find yourself in a desperate scramble to get your home and family ready for the cold and snow of the upcoming season. And, if you are a first-time homeowner, the prospect of getting your home prepared for winter may be daunting and unnerving at best. However, if you take it one step at a time, the process can be made far easier for you. Get to know some of the ways that you can prepare your windows and doors for winter and get to work on your preparations as soon as possible. You will be well on your way to being ready for winter before you know it.

Repair and Insulate Your Sliding Glass Doors

If you have any sliding glass doors in your home, particularly those that lead to a patio, you will more than likely not need them much during the icy, snowy winter to come. To prevent these sliding glass doors from leaking warm air out of your home and cold air in, you will want to do some work on those doors.

First and foremost, if there are any gaps in the frame surrounding your sliding glass door, you will need to have those repaired. Damage to the glass or gaps in between the stationary and sliding glass panel will also need to be addressed as soon as possible.

Gaps can be filled with caulk or insulation and then sealed to prevent air leakage. Additionally, you may wish to fill in the track that the sliding panel moves on with insulation. If you do not anticipate opening the door at all during the winter, you can place adhesive plastic sheeting on the entirety of the doors so that no air leakage will occur.

Preparing the Windows and Doors You Will Open

While you can seal up the patio doors that you will not use during the winter, it would be unsafe to seal up all of your windows and impossible to do so with all of your doors. As such, in order to winterize these elements of your home, you will need to take a few different steps than the aforementioned patio doors.

Sealing any leaks will still be a priority, of course. In order to further prevent air leakage, you will want to add insulation stripping along the bottom of the door. The area between the bottom of a door and the frame is often the source of much of the door's air leakage and the insulation strips can help to fill that gap.

Such insulation strips can be placed around the frame of the windows as well. Be sure you have extra insulation stripping in case it moves or tears if you find yourself needing to open the window in the winter.

Now that you have a few ideas about how to winterize your windows and doors, you can get started. Your home will be ready for winter weather before you know it.

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