Retain or remove porch door?

D13exile

I'm refurbishing a 20 year old 3 bed semi with garage and attic conversions. The existing windows are past their sell by date and I'm replacing them. However the company I'm going with are advising that I remove the existing sliding porch door to the front. While it's seen better days, I thought it provided a second barrier against heat loss?. The window and door company say that their new composite door has insulation inside it and this negates the second door at the front but I think otherwise. What would you advise, retain or replace the existing porch sliding door or remove it and rely upon the new composite door?

van_beano

D13exile wrote: »

I'm refurbishing a 20 year old 3 bed semi with garage and attic conversions. The existing windows are past their sell by date and I'm replacing them. However the company I'm going with are advising that I remove the existing sliding porch door to the front. While it's seen better days, I thought it provided a second barrier against heat loss?. The window and door company say that their new composite door has insulation inside it and this negates the second door at the front but I think otherwise. What would you advise, retain or replace the existing porch sliding door or remove it and rely upon the new composite door?

We replaced our sliding door with French doors to match the windows, our thinking was that's it's a 2nd level of protection against break-in's through the front door.

Heat loss wasn't a factor for us as the porch area isn't insulated but the 2nd door did reduced draughts.

caesarthechimp

There are two other options which are better;

1. Put the new door further out, to replace the sliding doors. This makes your hall bigger, and gets rid of some the extra heat loss areas (the floor of the bedroom above the porch, and the one or two sidewalls of the porch) Downside is the floor and maybe one wall of the porch may need to be insulated.

2. Replace the inner door but keep the outer as a storm porch. Its never going to be a proper "draught lobby" though, because its too small for someone to wait in with both doors closed. But it still shelters whatever is inside from cold winds when it is closed.

Just replacing the inner door and removing the outer one leaves you with the worst of both options.

BryanF

If you can't afford to replace the porch slider, keep it.

Even an Unheated porch with a crap door is better than nothing.

Their door maybe super, and no offence to your house, but around that door there may well s a lack of insulation continuity, so any external buffer on a cold day will help the internal surrounding wall surface temp