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Heavy rains from Hurricane Henri happened overnight. In the morning, I noticed the bottom of the door moulding on the inside was wet. How do I prevent water coming in from the exterior of my front door?

Some ideas:

Replace weather stripping?
Replace door sweep?
Replace the piece under the door?
Replace any of the door?
Replace all of the door? Sand/Prime/Paint the exterior trim?
Caulk everywhere?
Install a storm door?

It is the same door featured in this question

Update: I followed the steps listed in MonkeyZeus’s answer as seen in this video. In addition I adjusted the doorknob lock-catch to bring the doors in tighter against the weatherstripping. I also replaced the door bottom because the previous was cracked, chipped, and missing chunks in places.

Result: After weathering a few inches of rain from the remnants of Hurricane Ida over Southern New Jersey, the inside was bone dry. Problem solved!

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FrancisJohn
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5 Answers5

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Those bottom corners are the only problematic locations, right?

Referring to Page #7 of these Jeld-Wen installation Instructions which I recently followed.

enter image description here

  1. You are missing the foam wedges
    • Go to the millwork desk of your local big box home improvement store and ask if they have any extra they could give you. I'm sure Amazon carries them as well.
  2. It looks like no sealant was used
    • Clean up the area nicely and apply some fresh silicone or OSI Quad Max and let it cure

After addressing these two issues you might find that the water issue has been solved. If not then replacing the weather-stripping is a good next step.

"How do I test for water infiltration?" you ask?

Well it's quite complicated but do you have a garden hose with a "shower" setting nearby? =)

If the weather-stripping doesn't solve the issue then look into high quality storm doors like an Anderson 3000 series storm door.

Albeit, I would suggest a storm door regardless.

Messing around with the jamb or threshold will quickly amass into a time-consuming, gigantic, and potentially expensive headache so I would consider this to be the "nuclear" option.

MonkeyZeus
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4

You'll need to look straight on at the gaps around the door (top and sides) - any place you see daylight (like the bottom left corner in the first picture) will need to have the weather stripping replaced. Usually, this means replacing the weather stripping along that entire side - to my knowledge, piecing it together along one side probably isn't the best bet. If you have to replace some (and you do), you may as well replace it all. It probably won't cost must more to get a kit for the whole door than it would for one piece.

If brand new weather strip still doesn't prevent light coming through, you'll need either thicker weather stripping (to span the larger gap), or you'll need to adjust the door in its mount to better center it (that would be a whole new question here, feel free to ask it if you need to).

If there is light coming through between the wooden trim and the frame (i.e. not through the door opening itself), then you will need to apply caulk. A good quality exterior grade caulk would be appropriate. You might get one in a matching color, or you might get a good paintable caulk and choose to do some touch-up painting. You'll probably want to recaulk around the entire opening because "touching up" caulk is difficult to do and get it looking good, especially right there at the front door where all your house guests will see it. You'll want to do all the appropriate prep work for caulking as well - you should be able to find several good questions about that here, if not, we certainly need one!

If you see light at the bottom between the door and the threshold, you might be able to adjust the threshold, but I don't think yours is an adjustable one. Instead, you'd want to replace the door sweep on the bottom. The temptation would be to go with a big, thick, beefy one thinking "this will fill that gap!" but if it's too thick, it'll fill the gap so well your front door won't close. You will probably need to take the door off the hinges to get at the sweep at the bottom, so choose a day when it's not raining, or at least, not blowing in the front door.

Once you fix the seals around the door, then it won't get into the house to attack the moldings. Fixing up the current water damage would be grounds for a search here for additional info and maybe even another question.

FreeMan
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Front porch?

Your front door seems pretty exposed. And your yard looks nice. You could put a front porch in front of your house. The porch would blunt the force of incoming weather. You could enclose it in screens, although just a roof would prevent a lot of direct assault by wind and rain.

It is kind of an expensive fix for a leaky front door. But when you are done you could sit on your front porch and take in the autumn.

Willk
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One alternative is to replace the wood that could be exposed to water. They make 100% vinyl trim that will not wick water.

I tend to agree with Willk that water is driving up against your door, which is your root issue. If an awning is not an option, a cheaper alternative could be a rain diverter or limited gutters to help channel the water away from the door.

Machavity
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I just saw the updated picture of the door from the outside and instead of continuing to add more comments, I see something of concern, related to water infiltration from above the door.

enter image description here

It's hard to tell for sure from that angle, but it sure looks like you have a big flat area above the door with no obvious drainage path. It could be a camera distortion but it even looks like it's concave towards the middle of the door. And if that angles backwards toward the building, that's an uh-oh in my book. I also see a little damage underneath the crown molding there.

If I were you, I'd get on a ladder and pour a little water where the arrow is pointed and see where it goes. If it just sits there or drains into the woodwork, you've got an issue.

The gap in the door needed to be addressed as well so I'm not contradicting the accepted answer. You just might have more than one issue here.

Addendum: Here's an example of something you could use to address this:

enter image description here

This is from here (pricey!) but you could find other more cost-effective options. Just make sure it's meant for outdoor applications and is sealed really well. Where I live, we have a lot of snow and rain to worry about so having any sort of flat surface like this that's exposed to the elements would require a waterproof membrane at the very least. I see some cracks that have been filled in there which suggests that there's been an issue at some point. The repairs might help but I would expect them to fail before long.

http://www.wholesalemillwork.com/moldings/pht500/mld734x12.jpg

JimmyJames supports Canada
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