Long-awaited chippy has now been and gone, leaving a beautiful new front door sill and external draught strips - cut wrong with daylight coming in.

Should I ever regain the will to live, I'll add those really simple blade draught-proofers - plastic or copper strip with a crease down the middle which you nail in the gap between door and frame. But I can't find them on Google, just posh versions requiring rebates.

Anybody suggest a supplier?

Not according to their website.

Get the chippy back and insist on a new door! Not good enough!

Hi,

Try googling for Eskimo Architectural products, or, Ventura dot uk dot com (I know that doesn’t look right but it seems to work)

Lots of different type here

Cheers

Mike up North

Posted By: MattGet the chippy back and insist on a new door! Not good enough!

Oh I know. The posh threshold seal he sliced wrong cost the same amount he did. More, if you include the decent draught stripping he then cut round it.

He was outside closed door to do this, so I didn't see it till complete. But I shouldn't have to stand over a tradesman, who's done more doors than I've had hot dinners, to make him get it right.

As so many have said on this forum, a lot of people just don't get draught-proofing, thermal bridging, etc. They see the product as a magic bullet which just needs to be shoved in OK-ish - hence triple glazing with whistling great crack around it. Excusable in an inexpert consumer; completely unacceptable in a tradesman.

No different from the rest of our lives, of course: human beings don't take well to the mundane, slow or tedious when the exciting, dramatic and quick is glittering before our eyes. So we choose wind turbines over loft insulation, weight-loss pills over healthy eating, and want to hear Yes or No rather than It Depends. *sigh*

/end weltschmerz/

In the meantime, Other Half will cough up for more draught-proofing...

So sorry Jacky about your b@llsed up door but if it makes you feel better, it happens to everyone. Every time I open my 'big' stationery cupboard I get hit on the head by a long length of intumescent strip left off my office fire doors - chippy claimed it was draught excluder and optional and I couldn't be bothered wasting my breath arguing. (With the huge gap above the ceiling tiles, the fire doors are a nonsense anyway). I will move the intumescent strip to where it doesn't fall down one of these days but I kinda like the reminder not to take professionalism amongst tradesmen for granted.

lol JackyR - maybe we need to start an 'incompetent and funny trades' thread. My finest is arriving onsite after a couple of days away (I had four renovations and attic conversions on the go at the time) - to find four of the nice expensive new pitch pine doors all fitted upside down....!!! I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. There was also the stand-in plumber as we were using our 'normal' guy on another job, who not once, not twice, but three times went to fill the new heating system to find that he had just not connected some pipes....

Paul! That's it!

Matt, coming up... (edit) Here: http://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=2922&page=1

JackyR. There was a thread a while back about women and men, and how we deal with each other. . . . . I bemoaned the fact, that, like you said, you shouldn't have to stand over someone to make sure they do it right.

We're all adults, and they - presumably - do their job more than you do - ergo - are the 'experts'.

We've just had a whole load of new wooden DG sash windows installed, by a bloke who makes them (and coffins) for a living.

Even so. He neglected to tell me that I could actually specify how deep the gaps between the panes could be -so 'assumed I'd want the minimum gap' when he'd already started making them.

Not only that, but he's fitted them without draught excluders. . . . . . . .why would he do that? did he think I wanted DG because I was 'bored with single panes of glass"???????

Any way. I let him get on with it and then I passed him - without incident - on to my sister. . . . . . . .(so he could 'work his magic on her)

For the last week I've had my sister round here 'of a night' drinking our stash of red wine in desperation at his ineptness. Then today I had him back again - almost in tears (and I hate to see grown men cry) saying, 'he's NEVER, in all his decades of proffessional life, EVER been treated in such a manner (she's a perfectionist - need I say more?). . . . . and he knows she's my sister. . . . . .and then he cringes like he's talking about the very devil incarnate. . . . . . . . .

There's no real point to this anecdote. It's just my way of saying, I hear you girl. . . . . .try and think. . . . . KARRRRMA BABY!!!!!

Presumably your doors are made from ironwood?
Frank

No, PVCU. The problem is that they warp with a temperature difference inside to outside. It's just enough to lose the seal (at the bottom mainly). Thinking about it while getting a cold one from the fridge... Well, if no one sells one specifically for doors, might try to get a spare fridge seal and give it a go. Will post back if I have any success. Probably in the New Year tho.