How To Insulate A Crawlspace Door
Insulated Crawl Space Door
This article will address how to insulate a crawlspace door. We were contacted by our client to provided additional insulation and weatherization to her home after she had an energy audit by her local energy provider. Home energy audits can tell you a lot about your home and identify areas that you can address and save money instantly.
My suggestion is to focus on this type of “low hanging fruit” in order to achieve energy savings. These are large heat loss issues like adding insulation, storm windows or foaming air leaks in the attic.
Crawlspace Doors And Access Panels
Many homes have crawl space doors and access panels. Unfortunately most are not exterior grade doors with integrated weatherstripping to seal off drafts and provide insulation.
Custom Doors Are Costly
By nature crawlspace doors are not usually a standard size door which means ordering a custom and typically costly door. The best solution in these situations is to custom order an exterior door in these situations.
Home Made Doors Are A Reality
Because of this most folks opt not to spend the money and use plywood or cut an interior style, hollow core or solid door down.
Insulating A Crawlspace Door
Short of ripping the door out there is a simple fix you can do to increase the R-value. You can add insulation and weather stripping to the door you have.
On the door pictured below, I added a 1″ foil insulation board to the back of this door adding an R-value of 6.5. After market weather stripping can also be added to prevent drafts at the door seams.
I cut the insulating board to fit snug and used expanding foam to glue the foil board to the door. Several screws with finish washers hold the board in place till the glue dried.
I added foil to two doors. Labor time to add the board was under an hour.
~ concord carpenter
