LESLIE: Jim in South Dakota has an issue with water getting inside exterior doors. How can we help you today?
JIM: Well, I’ve got a couple of exterior doors in the garage I added onto my house. And I’m getting water coming inside the doors. And two of them are coming through the latch-side bottom corner. I’ve tried siliconing the threshold up to where it meets the jamb. Tried running a little bead of silicone in there to seal that up but I can’t seem to find where it’s coming in at. But every time it rains and if there’s a breeze and pushing the rain against the latch side of the door, it’s running down and coming to the inside.
TOM: I’ve seen that kind of thing before, water getting inside exterior doors. It’s very frustrating. You’re talking about a standard exterior door, not an overhead door, right? You’re talking about one that has hinges?
JIM: Right. Yeah. An exterior walk-through door. Yep.
TOM: The first thing I would check is to make sure the door is perfectly hung. And by that, I mean it has an even reveal top, side, bottom. And then looking under the door, sometimes with a flashlight you can see gaps. So if you use a flashlight at the saddle, you could shine it on one side and look underneath and see if there’s any gaps there.
The type of weather-stripping you have is the kind that kind of looks like what’s on a refrigerator door?
JIM: Yeah, yeah. It’s that – the style or old style, whatever you want to call it, yeah.
TOM: That’s actually pretty durable.
Now, does this door open into the garage or does it open out to the backyard?
JIM: Inward.
TOM: So, pretty much like a standard door.
Well, listen, if you don’t find anything there, I think you’re going to have to go with a storm door, because it’s definitely breaking down with the weather-stripping. That’s why you’re getting water inside exterior doors.
JIM: I’m going to have to give that a try.
TOM: Alright? Good luck.
Leave a Reply