I know I'm resurrecting an old thread, but this should fit it well. Has anybody ever found a door system that will truly seal like a house door for enclosing a bird barn? I'm going to add a parking spot on the side of the house and would like to tie into the house hvac, but I'd like to be able to seal the bird door much better than anything I've seen. Standard garage and roll up doors just don't seal well enough for me. I haven't seen any sliders that seal any better. So what have you found?
Hi John,
This is probably the best you're going to do:
http://www.overheaddoor.com/insulated-wi...d-door-525. I keep the bus in Huntersville, NC where the annual temps range from low teens to well over 100 deg F. My garage is 2000 sq ft with two 14'x14' overhead doors. It's heated and air conditioned and it's quite comfortable. The door I linked to has an R-Value of 16.22 which is about the same as 3.5" of batt insulation - not bad.
That's not too bad overall. What does it use to seal the sides of the panels to the opening? Do you see any way to improve on that? My existing doors (roll-up, same size) seem to allow for a lot of air intrusion along the sides of the door, even though I have double sealing strips along each door edge. Mine don't rattle like most roll-ups do, but there's still quite a bit of wind around them, even though they seal fairly well. The R16 value isn't too bad, but the 0.07cfm/ft2 at a fairly gentle 15mph wind is what really kills it.
Nothing more than just your usual lip seal tacked onto the exterior side trim. Your right, any draft around the sides is going to kill it. Any chance of moving the doorway our of the prevailing wind path?
John,
We get a lot of high wind during the winter months here. We have no wind coming through around the bus door. The key is a good quality door fitted with the proper seal as you see in the pic below.[
attachment=2098]
The new house will be in a much less windy area, so that will help. I haven't yet figured out which way the prevailing winds blow there, but it's on my list to do.
Chuck,
That seal does look like it seals pretty well. Is that a standard for that door manufacturer or something special? And how old is that one?
John,
Those are 1-peice PVC trim/seals. They are about 3 years old.