How can I Prevent Inward Opening Summerhouse Doors Leaking?

by **Alvin Wyllie** » Sat Jan 31, 2015 12:57 pm

I can play bridge, the trombone and the gramophone, but as a carpenter I'm fairly useless. Anyway, I bought a 3m x 3m summerhouse 3 years ago, which looks good and more importantly, the wife loves it. However, the doors leak. The summerhouse was the cheapest around and I figured I could always attend to defects as and when.The instructions weren't specific about whether to hang them opening inwards, or outwards, and I hung them to open inwards. I figured with overlapping wood strips along the top, down the sides and down the join, water ingress would be minimised. I found I needed to mount rain deflectors on the outside of the bottom of both doors, so I did that. The doors still leak. Would it be better to mount them opening outwards? Another possibility would be to buy well-made doors made to size. Any advice most welcome.

by **TheDoctor4** » Mon Mar 09, 2015 12:21 pm

Hi Alvin

Do you have a weather strip on each of the doors at all or is this what you mean in terms of rain deflector? This is a small strip that goes at the base of the door and prevents any rain water that runs down the face of the door from running down between the door and the frame and entering the room space.

It maybe that rainwater/moisture is entering the summer house this way?

Can you see where the water is entering at all as this may highlight where the actual leak is

Hanging the doors so that they swing outwards may help the situation as you can then add a lip to cover around the outside of the door. You can then have a seal that runs around the inside of the lip that that covers the gap between the door and the frame that touches the frame to ensure that no water or moisture can then run down behind the lip and enter the property

Kind Regards

by **Alvin Wyllie** » Thu Jun 11, 2015 6:16 am

Thanks for your reply, Doctor4. I've found that a lot of the water ingress in fact comes in past my own bad sealing round the acrylic window panels. It would also make sense for me to sit in the summerhouse during wet weather and see where the leaks are....