Water under door thresholds.

[Surely Yurts - Steve]

This is the stuff:

https://www.sailrite.com/HH-66-Vinyl...SABEgKQYvD_BwE


Nasty fumes on this stuff but it works.

[Bob Rowlands]

I haven't done this, but my suggestion is to get a cartridge of 3M Silicone 2, and a small caulking gun, and either smear it over the damaged area or glue on a reinforcing patch. Walmart, Depot, Lowes etc carries that product in the paint section. The area needs to be clean before applying. l

I have used that product. It is very heavy duty flexible sealant, normally used to seal joints in the bathroom. I know from experience that it takes days for silicone 2 to be fully removed from your skin, so that attests to its adherence quality. Wear disposable gloves. Wouldn't hurt to smear oil or petroleum jelly over your hands before you don the gloves. Good luck.

[Bob Rowlands]

Oh, and it takes a couple hours to set, and about a day to cure. Also, the area needs to be dry for best adherence.

[Bob Rowlands]

For whoever has a wood entry door exposed directly to weather, entry doors absolutely need a thick UNBROKEN coat of paint or clear finish. I mean recoated no less than every other year. No cracks at all or rot will assuredly start in the cracks from the sun, rain, snow, sun, rain, snow cycle.

Here's a sad story. I meticulously built a five panel yurt door from scratch. Caulked and painted it with hunter green oil base Rustoleum enamel. To see it, copy and paste: here:

Bob Rowlands home made yurt

in google images. Some months after those photos were taken, I hand painted a beautiful 'nomadic' Mongolian design on the exterior using a lettering brush and Testors enamel model paint. Lemme tell you that was a beautiful piece of work. However, I never considered the weather and the direct sun on it year around. I let cracks develop in the paint, because I knew from experience that if I coated the door with clear poly it wouldn't stick to the Rustoleum base paint. Well that door rotted out in about five years. That here in CO, with a dry climate.

[Wintergreen282]

I get this problem sometimes when it rains hard. What works for me is a dowel cut the width of the door. Then duct tape a piece of tarp on it. When not in use, it lives rolled up beside the door, standing on end. When the rain comes, I unroll it, open the door, and wedge it in the door frame about 10” from the bottom, with the bottom edge of the plastic overhanging the door jamb.

My tarp piece is the width of the door and maybe 12” long - so I can easily step in and out. During really bad storms I have taped a different, longer piece of tarp on the same dowel that blocks the whole door. Storms where the rain is actually running down the door onto the jamb and into the yurt. Not just splashing up from the roof. You do have to then secure the bottom as a piece that long will flap around in the wind. Not 100% perfect, but cheap, easy, and fast.

Hope everyone is well and surviving the virus and fallout. - Cindy

[jo17]

Hello Everyone,

I realize it's been a while since this thread has been alive, heres hoping folks are still around.

I have 30' Pacific yurt, pretty happy with the product overall.

I have 3 doors and all of them have sight water ingress around the threshold's. At first I was noticing that the roof line was dripping down directly onto the threshold and water was building up so I added a flashing tucked under the roof flap that diverted the drips away from the door and this helped a lot. In driving rain though water makes its way up the threshold and inside.

I have also noticed that when the temperate drops and its not raining that there is quite a bit of condensation on the inside of the metal threshold where the hot air is meeting cold metal.

Has anyone come up with better ways to deal with these issues?

Cheers !

[Bob Rowlands]

Get down on the floor and eyeball the bottom of the door/threshold to see what's going on down there. If you see any gaps, and you aren't a carpenter, have one come out and see what he can do to get this corrected. Without being there myself I won't be able to diagnose and repair the issue. In the meantime silicone the snot of every place possible.

Quality exterior doors come with a fully adjustable threshold. The threshold is screwed into the bottom of the side jambs, effectively locking them in place, just as the top jamb locks the side jambs in place.

Do your doors have adjustable thresholds? Good ext door thresholds feature an adjustable section, directly under the closed door, that can be raised and lowered about 1/4" inch, with a #3 phillips screwdriver. They face up and are plainly visible when the door is open.

The moveable section is adjusted up or down so it seals against the vinyl sweep attached to the bottom of the door. That very effectively seals out water and air. The fixed part of the threshold slopes to the exterior, so water running down the door stays outside.

I have installed hundreds of these doors over the decades, including three on our house. The entry is covered, so water is not an issue. However the garage service door and laundry door are exposed to rain. No leaks or ants spiders etc. in 20 years.

Also when I install these doors I run a fat zig zag bead of construction adhesive on the subfloor, slab, or furring strip, and set the threshold on top of that bead. That absolutely stops water, air, and bugs from getting inside.

That's all I got. Get a carpenter over there. Good luck.

[skihuckster]

This is an old thread but in case someone is looking...Aquaseal has worked really well for me to patch fabric and seams. I have same issue with water on the threshold. Silicone caulk under it stopped water coming in under it. But it still runs along the Al below the sweep. I plan to glue a piece of aluminum moulding just under the outside edge of the door so that gravity forces the water to just drip off the outside edge. I'll report back how well it works.

[Bob Rowlands]

Some door sweeps have an extended lip -like a small awning at the bottom of the door- that directs water well out onto the sloped threshold.

Aquaseal is my 'GO TO' sealant for repairing tears and seams on waders, tent fly, boots, poncho, and a few other places I can't recall offhand. If Aquaseal will adhere to the substrate, (it will not on some types of fabric coatings) you will have a tough permanent repair that is extremely wear resistant, tough, and flexible. I extended the life of the toe of my boots with aquaseal. Yes, it IS that tough.

It's expensive in the little tubes. If you have a pile of gear to repair buy the 8 oz tube it is far more reasonable. I think you can find the 1 oz tubes online, that's the size I used to buy. Be aware it will cure by itself in the tube if you leave it stored for an extended period.

[UKadventurer]

Originally Posted by Bob Rowlands

Some door sweeps have an extended lip -like a small awning at the bottom of the door- that directs water well out onto the sloped threshold.

We've had a few small leaks under doors and windows. Although the rainy season is more or less over, I've been thinking about how to address this too.

In the case of thresholds and bottom sills, I remember English windows and door sills have a groove cut in the underside of the wood. This interrupts any water that attempts to track under the sill horizontally. That's probably old school these days and aluminum drip edges are probably more common, especially in the USA, if I remember correctly.

I tried to buy some drip edges in the building materials zone of Ulaanbaatar but they didn't have any premade. Instead they could cut and form sheet aluminum if I gave them a spec.

Another option, would be to cut a rain-drip groove into sills and thresholds after the installation. This seems awkward because there is often little space to get a power tool, such as a handheld router in the limited space between the foundation and the wood sill.

Any suggestions on how to get a functional drip-edge or drip-interruptor on bottom sills after installation. There's a bit of an overhang of these so I think a small specialist tool might work to cut a groove.