Your Exclusive 2022 Guide to External Doors – What you need to know?

We understand that looking for an external door can be confusing at times and there are many things you need to look out for in terms of designs and what you can and can’t do in order to meet building regulations. Here, we have tried to give you as much information as we can in order to help you make a decision and to make it easier for you to purchase the door you require.

What is a Solid Wood Door?

External doors can be made from solid oak or hardwood, this is where all or the majority of the door is made from solid timber, there are no veneers or engineered components to the door.

Our external traditional doors are made from a solid oak outer frame and the panels are made using an exterior grade cross laminated board with a prime oak veneer. The cross laminated board helps ensure the door is more stable and has a much more reduced risk of movement than inner panels made with 100% solid oak.

Our Online Door Designer

You can design your own external door with our online door designer on which we have set designs for the doors. These are the most popular designs for external doors in both traditional and contemporary styles.

With our door designer you can choose everything you would like on a door from the glass to the handle colour and style and we supply it to you all ready to fit into your aperture at home.

Custom Requirements

We know sometimes that the set designs we have are not exactly what you need so our designs can be tweaked slightly to suit your requirements. The stile/rail/muntin width and placement are customisable within some basic size limits.

You could also send us images through of the doors you would like and we can always check to see if this is something we can do for you and send you a price through.

Replacing an existing door

In most cases you will already have an external door and you may just want to replace this one with a new style door that you prefer. It can be quite simple to replace your existing door with a new one, you can simple just measure the old one and use the sizes to purchase the new door, there are a few things to keep in mind however when you look into this.

You may find that the door you already have is hollow or has more of an eggbox or chipboard core, this is not uncommon and can easily be swapped for a solid oak door

Installation

• If you have never hung a door before then we highly recommend that you get a professional to fit the door for you. External doors need to be fitted properly to ensure that the property is sufficiently sealed.
• You will need to check the thickness of the door. Unless you please on replacing the entire door and frame you will need to ensure the new door you purchase is the same thickness as the one you are replacing.
• If you are replacing a hollow door for a solid oak door then you need to be aware that solid doors are much heavier than hollow so you will need to make sure you purchase and fit the right amount of hinges to ensure they can take the weight of the door so that it hangs properly.

Expansion and lifespan of Wooden External doors

Timber doors expand as they pick up moisture from the surrounding air, but they only expand in certain directions. It will expand across its width and thickness however, it will not expand along its length.

If properly cared for a solid oak door should last a lifetime. When you receive the door if we have not prefinished the doors for you, which we highly recommend, then it will need correctly finishing on site using the instructions we have provided.

Guarantees

Most finishing companies usually guarantee their finishes for 7 – 10 years before major refinishing is required, but this dependent on where the door is fitted and how much weather and sunlight the door is subject to, in these cases refinishing may need to be carried out sooner.

Do wooden external doors block sound?

Acoustic rating on external doors is spec dependent, with our contemporary doors we can achieve a sound reduction of up to RW. 34db. Our oak external doors would be design dependent but would usually be around RW 30 db.

Do Heritage external doors meet building regulations?

Part M

All of our Prehung door sets are part M compliant, which is to do with mobility and are fitted with a low threshold.

Part L

Another regulation that the doors may need to be is Part L, this is to do with the thermal efficiency of the doors. If you are replacing the doors than Part L does not need to be met but new build homes do require it to be met.

Accoya is naturally insulating, so doorsets for new builds where Part L thermal efficiency regulations must be met than Accoya would be a great choice.
If you order a door from our contemporary range then the door will be made from a great quality timber composite slab, which is thermally efficient and cross laminated to ensure stability so all these doors will pass the requirements of Part L.

Which doors don’t meet Part L?

At this moment in time our traditional oak doors do not meet Part L requirements. The Pattern 10 door would as there is much more glass, which has a better rating, but solid oak or doors with less glass wouldn’t. U Values will vary but would be around 2.5 for 44mm solid oak External doors like the Mexicano.