Air Infiltration Sliding Barn Doors

[Mark A. Small]

I have two large sliding barn doors that I'd like to weatherproof for the winter. The doors are insulated and the building is very well insulated. But the doors are not in tracks and there are large gaps around them.

My idea is to spray some type of removable adhesive into the corners of the doors and the jams and put bubble wrap in the corners for the winter and then remove it all come spring. Has anyone used this solution? It seems cheap, easy and I imagine effective.

Also can anyone recommend a removable spray adhesive for the job?

Thanks!

[Jesse Busenitz]

Very interesting as I'm in the exact same boat. I just remodeled a newer horse barn into a wood shop and it has 3 openings all closed with sliding doors. On the North, South and East sides. I use my North door as the main entrance so I'm thinking of going to a over head door at least on it and sealing the others. I definitely need to come up with something as cool temps are not that far away.

[Lon Crosby]

In my barn workshop, I cut two sheets of 2" thick solid foam insulation slightly oversized and wedged them into the opening. Tacked a 1 by across the opening to provide wind resistance against buckling on the inside.

[Mark A. Small]

Thanks, Lon. I just put a new addition on and insulated the foundation with 2" foam that I cut on my table saw. That is an interesting idea. My opening is 15' x 9' 6". So I think it might be awkward to get 4 pieces of board to stay tight - and difficult to support. Your 1 by solution might work - that would be one long 1 by but maybe 2 of them would do the trick. The sheathing they put on my addition used a wide tape to totally seal the seams. That might be a component to the solution as well.

I was thinking that spraying an adhesive and putting a 12" piece of bubble wrap in each corner would be a one hour project and also be relative cheap.

[Rick Potter]

If you are not opening it till Spring, can you possibly just stuff fiberglass insulation into the cracks? Maybe the round foam pipe insulation would work?

[Keith Westfall]

OP, do your doors overlap or butt up together? If they overlap at the joint, you can get a large bolt, add a handle (think like a crank) and go through one door to the other and pull them together. Insulation in between and you're good.

If they butt together, not as easy, but you could add a piece to the outside of one door to cause an overlapping situation where they butt together.

Screw cranks can be done at the ends and the middle.

[John Ziebron]

I had my shop in a pole barn at my last house and it had the double sliding doors that were 12 feet high, same as the inside height. I insulated the doors using 2 inch styrofoam. Each door had a roller mounted in the cement outside to keep it from flopping when opening it. And there was a piece of stainless angle also mounted in the cement outside that kept the center junction of the 2 doors from flopping out when they were closed. But I had the same issues with air leakage. My solution was to use the standard garage door sealing strips (the plastic ones with the rubber lip that you can buy in different lengths) along the sides and at the top. These strips are, of course, mounted inside. You want to mount them so they just seal which minimizes resistance when opening the doors. Sealing the bottom of the doors required more thought. I ended up buying some canvas from a local fabric shop and sewed the length to match each door width and the width of the canvas so it would form a "tube" about 3 inches in diameter when filled with sand. You could sew the end shut after filling with sand but I sewed a pocket for a drawstring on mine. Then you can take each long tube a lay it down to cover that gap at the bottom of each door. The one problem I never successfully solved was keeping the birds from nesting in that space above the track which is covered by sheet metal.

[Robert Engel]

I have the same issue.
Not worried about insulating them, just want to keep wind out.

I'm thinking about some way to employ a garage door seal veritically where it will flex against the wall and hold a seal.

[Mark A. Small]

My doors are huge. They are not 100% straight. I feel like a garage door seal is going to impede my ability to easily open and close them. I can live without using the doors for 4 months. For me the solution I am going to try this year is removable spray adhesive and 12" flexible insulation roll. It will, I believe, definitely stop the air infiltration and be a really cheap solution.

[Todd Burch]

Try these people:

http://precisionbrush.com/custom-brush-weather-seals

[Mark A. Small]

Todd, they are certainly reasonably priced and have a lot of different options for mounting them. Do you have any experience using brushes to stop air infiltration? How effective is it?Shop Doors.jpg

[Todd Burch]

Sorry, I have no experience with them, but I think they will be my go-to folks when I build my sliding doors.

Todd