Weatherbar for French doors

[Robbox]

I must fit a weather-bar to our new french doors before the winter weather comes down.

Two choices really, one is an aluminium extrusion from Stormguard (the 63mm version) and the other is the re-purpose a window cill from a new window that was never fitted in the shed...don't ask!

The Stormguard option is neat, fairly easy to fit but looks out of place on timber doors. It would last forever of course....

If I went for the cut-down cill option, how much projection should I allow and would it be best to screw/glue from the outside, then plug?

This cill has been out in all weathers without any sign of damage, so I assume it's made from decent timber and maybe treated.

Any advice from the carpenters/joiners here?

 

[pinenot]

How much clearance is there under the doors presently? ...pinenot

 

[Robbox]

1/4 inch maybe at most....rain blows under and although doors recently painted/sealed, moisture is getting inside and expanding the timber. I think the bar will stop a lot of this.

 

[pinenot]

There's no doubt a properly fitted weather bar would stop the water ingress, but it will also bring with it, a step over which french doors don't normally have. Better in my view would be to fit water shedding nosings to the bottom of the doors and fit a recessed level threshold along the closed door line taking care of the wind blown water. Something like this -

Untitled

• pinenot
• 21 Aug 2013
• 1

...pinenot

 

[Robbox]

Thanks for this advice.

Anyway, yesterday, I tried out the cutdown window cill I had, but even with a 50mm projection, the weather bar will interfere with opening the doors out flat to the wall. They have large projection hinges to clear the recess, but just not enough to clear the weather bar....

So it's back to the aluminium weather bar, that doesn't project so far and allows the doors to open out flat to the wall.

Even though I don't especially like the look of the ally weather bar, at least it's impervious to weather! On our front door, the weather bar has a mind of it's own in the winter weather it gets, bowing and sticking on the threshold.