choosing the Right Storm Door From an specialist Storm Door Installer's Perspective
Making the decision to add or change a storm door to your house can drastically change the look of your home. It is important to choose the right storm door that fits with the look of your house. When selecting a storm door, there are 5 main things to consider: Price, Material, Size, Handing, and Style.
Pricing on Storm Doors
First and foremost, you should stick to your budget. Storm doors range in price from around 0-0 for accepted size doors that you can find at Lowe's or Home Depot to around 0-0 for custom sized doors ordered from the same retailers. Now be realistic, while you may find a coupon that gives you a good deal, a 0 screen door is not going to accomplish like a 0 storm door.
Now you may ask, "What makes a 0 storm door great than a 0 storm door?" The talk is the materials and the bells and whistles. Vinyl storm doors are less costly than extruded aluminum storm doors. While you save money on the price, they will wear out Faster because of exposure to the eleMents. However, you can get a wood-core vinyl door which is more sturdy and provides great insulation for a microscopic bit more money. On a higher-end door you may get a choice of custom colors like cranberry, hunter green, or almond where on the lower end you can only have white or black. With more costly doors you can regularly choose a hardware color ranging from brass or silver to oil-rubbed bronze and ancient brass. One important divergence is most top end doors come with 2 door closure pistons instead of 1. They are mounted at the top and bottom of the door instead of just having one at the top of the storm door. This gives the door great rigidity and allows you to adjust the speed more. Keep in mind that the cost of a isolate piston is only about .00, so don't spend an extra 0 on a door just to get a second door closure.
The best way to get a sense of the price is to either go into a national retailer like Lowe's or Home Depot and look at the storm doors or hunt online If you go to a store, be aware that while some company may have normal knowledge, most do not know the first thing about storm doors. I personally try to avoid them because in my touch none of them has ever unmistakably installed a storm. To make matters worse, their training is minimal and they give cookie-cutter answers to all your questions. Personally, I like to shop online to assess prices and narrow down more what I am finding for.
Another thing to think about pricing is that most storm doors are Energystar compliant, which means that your new door qualifies for an Irs tax credit. The credit can be up to as much as 0 and is claimed on your next years taxes. So keep in mind that you can save money on your taxes by purchasing a higher end door. For more information, refer to our Storm Door information page.
Materials
All storm doors are made from metal, wood, vinyl/plastic, or some aggregate thereof. Less costly doors use vinyl/plastic and may or may not have a wood core for added rigidity and insulation. More costly doors are made from extruded aluminum ("extruded" means "shaped")
The benefits of vinyl/plastic doors are that they are less costly to purchase, are easy to clean, and inexpensive to replace. With vinyl doors, especially Emco's Forever door, the color is molded throughout the door. This means that a scratch on the door is less descriptive because it is not a different color underneath. The drawbacks are that these storm doors wear out sooner, look "cheaper", and have issue standing up to extreme heat and cold.
The benefits of an extruded aluminum door are that it is heavier, more durable, longer-lasting, and great looking. They look classier and offer much more security. The drawbacks are that they are more expensive, are microscopic harder to clean, wish more maintenance, and can come to be hot to the touch when exposed to heat for a long time.
Sizes of Storm Doors
While you can order a storm door in anyone size you need, accepted door widths (measured in inches) are 30", 32", and 36". accepted door heights (measured in inches) range from 80"-81" and 96" (for 8' feet tall doors). Traditionally, your front door chance is 36" wide by 80"-81" high. Back doors are traditionally 32" wide by 80"-81" high; any way newer homes (built after 1990) have been also using 36" wide by 80"-81" high doors at times.
Storm Door Handing
One of the most important questions down the road becomes, "Which way will the door open?" If you are dealing ordering from a retailer like Lowe's or Home Depot, it is imperative that the sales rep be crystal clear on this. In the world of door installations, handing is everything. Now we get to some commerce jargon.
First, All storm door measureMents are assuming that you are standing face of your house finding at the door. Now, handing is stated as either "left-handed" or "right-handed." This means that if you but your back against the jamb where you want the door do be hinged, whichever hand of yours is on the face is the "handing" of your door.
For example, let's say you but your back against the hinge side jamb of your front door and your right hand is facing the outside. Then you want a "right-handed" door.
The good news on handing is that most accepted sized doors can be installed either way; you don't have to purchase a storm door that is pre-handed (unless you have an 8' tall door).
Now most of the time you want the storm door handles to be on the same side as the entry door handles. However, there are a few cases where this is not true. One such case is if you have a wall close to the opening. It is always preferable to have a storm door open towards a wall that is 12" or less from an entry door. This is to ensure that your "traffic pattern" is not interrupted. Meaning that people won't have to open and then walk around the storm door to get into the house. Doing this ensures that the storm door is not in your way when you enter and exit the house.
3 Styles of Storm Doors
Storm doors come in 3 different styles: Full-view, Ventilating, and Roll-screen.
- Full-view: A Full-View door is one where you can have Only the glass panel Or the screen panel in the door at any given time. You must physically change the glass and the screen and store the panel that is not in use. If you want to maximize daylight and visibility to the outside, this is the way to go. As long as you don't mind installing the screen in the spring and the glass in the fall, you will be happy with this door. It does not have a line across the middle of the door obstructing visibility.
- Ventilating: If you do not want to go straight through the hassle of changing glass and screen, the ventilating style keeps both glass and screen in the door at the same time. With this style, there are 2 panels of glass, and depending on the manufacturer, one or both move up and down revealing the screen measure and allowing for ventilation.
- Rollscreen: The Rollscreen models are the most recent hybrids and take the best of both worlds from the Fullview and the Ventilating style. In this style, the screen is still self storing like the ventilating model, but you get the visibility of a fullview door because the screen is rolled up on a tensioned dowel at the top of the door. As you pull the top window down, the screen is attached and then revealed. This is a great choice of you have kids or pets that have a keen potential to destroy screens, because the screen is only on the top part of the door . . . Far out of their reach.
Once you have decided which style, then it is time to decide which manufacturer.
There are 4 main storm door manufacturers: Pella, Larson, Emco, and Anderson. Lowe's Home improvement sells Pella and Larson brands while Home Depot sells Emco and Anderson products. From an installer's perspective, I would rank these manufacturers in order of preference based on stock selection, price, durability, warranty, ease of installation, buyer service, and fewest number of problems in the long run as:
- Pella Brand Storm Doors
- Larson Brand Storm Doors
- Anderson Brand Storm Doors
- Emco Brand Storm Doors
Carefully considering these 5 areas of storm doors will ensure that you pick the right storm door for your home. It will help take out some of the stress complicated in selection, and make sure that your expectations of the execution of your new door are realistic.
