Modern methods of keeping heat indoors are varied. If this is a house, the outer walls can be sheathed with foam, which will keep the lion's share of the heat inside. In an apartment, it is recommended to replace window packages and doors to avoid heat leakage to the outside. How to keep warm inside a garage or store? The smart answer is to install a door. But, in some cases, it is more advisable to use a thermal curtain in conjunction with the door leaf. What is this structure, and what role does it play in the process of keeping heat indoors?

Thermal curtain

To prevent the front door in the store or the entrance gate in the garage from being covered with a thick layer of frost during winter, it is necessary to create a thermal curtain. What it is? This is a structure that is being built with your own hands on a doorway. To begin with, from a soft insulation, you should cut 2 strips 10 cm wide and equal to the length of the opening, and two more for the top and bottom of the opening. Then, using nails and a hammer, we fix the insulation around the outer perimeter of the door frame. On top of the insulation strips, it is necessary to stuff wooden blocks. As a result, you should get a rectangle with insulation.

With your own hands

Thermal curtains and curtains for doors or gates must be made of high quality, dense material. It can be tarpaulin, PVC, dermantin. You can also use ready-made ribbon curtains. If a web of material is used for manufacturing, it is necessary to measure the width and length of the frame with insulation. Since the insulation will be attached to a wooden beam, it is necessary to sew rings at the top of the sheet, which will be worn on the upper crossbar. At a distance that is equal to the diameter of the ring above the bar, you need to fix a self-tapping screw, 60 mm long, leaving 20 mm outwardly. Next, we attach a meter-long wire through the rings of the insulating canvas, parallel to the sheathing and fix it on the self-tapping screw. On the left side of the door, we fix two springs. On the contrary, we sew them eyelets to the curtain. It is better to move the curtain outside the door. In this case, the canvas will not be covered with ice. The result is a high-quality thermal curtain on the front door.

Thermal curtain

To keep warm, you can take advantage of the achievements of modern science. More precisely, use an electric thermal air curtain. This is a structure in the form of an elongated metal body with grilles in the lower and lateral parts. A fan heater is hidden under the body, which sucks in cold air from the room, heats it up and pushes it out under pressure. The warm air mass is evenly distributed inside the enclosure and creates reliable thermal protection near the front door or window opening.

Note that a thermal curtain and an air curtain for openings are not an alternative to high-grade heating. But as an auxiliary tool for keeping warm in the room, it can be used quite successfully.

Thermal curtains for gates, as well as electric curtains, are often used in shops, garages, all kinds of workshops, where there is a large flow of people passing through the doors during the day. If the use of an electric curtain is impossible for various reasons, PVC curtains, tape or roll products can be used on the doors. If plastic windows allow heat to pass outside, an electric thermal curtain can also be used above the window.

Summing up

If there is a need to prevent heat leakage through door or window openings, it is recommended to use thermal curtains.

Such designs are widely available for sale ready-made. Thermal curtains for doors and windows are made from PVC tapes, whole canvases, in the form of rolled products. Also, there are electric thermal air curtains, which will not only prevent heat leakage from the room, but also decorate the interior design.

With the onset of frost, the issue of energy saving comes to the fore. And even if you do not think about the problems of environmental pollution and global warming, it is still worth thinking about the efficiency of heating, since this will significantly save money.

It's no secret that a lot of heat is lost through cracks in windows and doors, as well as through glass. In winter, you can feel how cold literally blows from the windows.

The situation can be corrected with the help of special insulated curtains, which will let less cold air into the room. In this article, we'll show you how to sew curtains to help keep you warm in winter.

The design of such curtains is very simple - they are multi-layer panels according to the size of the windows. The materials used for sewing curtains are about the same as for the manufacture of kitchen potholders.

Materials and tools for sewing warm curtains: special heat-reflecting material (similar to felt) opaque fabric meter, scissors decorative fabric sewing machine or needle and thread How to sew curtains with your own hands

Measure the window. Decide how much material you need to sew each curtain. Don't forget about allowances. In our case, the dimensions of the window are 100 × 150 cm.

We will need a sheet of heat-reflecting material of the same size. But opaque and decorative fabric should be taken with a small margin (about 2 centimeters for each of the seams).

Fold the sheets of opaque and decorative fabric with the right sides inward. Having retreated 1.5-2 cm from the edges, sew three sides. Turn out the resulting cover, iron the seams with an iron.

Window structures made of polyvinyl chloride are self-sufficient products that do not require additional thermal insulation.

If you are increasingly thinking about PVC, because in winter they still let the cold through, then there is definitely something wrong with some of the structural elements. Let's dwell on this issue in more detail.

What is a PVC window made of?

Any plastic window structure includes the following components:

• profile;
• rubber seals;
• double-glazed window;
• adjusting fittings;
• the bottom is a window sill, and on the sides there are slopes.

If a breakdown occurs in one of the listed components, blowing will appear.

What does thermal insulation mean?

Insulation of plastic windows is in the slopes. In the context of the other elements, this is only for troubleshooting. Due to the profile, for example, drafts never occur. Modern high-tech plastic is not wood. The material can neither dry up, nor "go".

Double-glazed windows lose heat if there is a depressurization of certain parts of the product. Do not want the windows to let the cold through, insulate the slopes or look for the cause of breakdowns. Let's start considering the insulation of the window structure from the slopes.

Protecting the slopes from the cold

For plastic windows, it is advisable to make slopes of plastic. It is best to cover them with hard plastic. Why? The material is excellent for additional thermal insulation.

In this case, the opening between the wall surface and the window frame is filled with special foam. Other options are foam insulators or slabs made from basalt fiber. Choose the material that suits your current tasks.

The outer and inner walls must also be insulated. Only this time, the materials already perform not insulating, but protective properties. The insulator directly protects from the negative effects of various external factors.

Elimination of the skew of the sashes

Window and wall structures are sometimes shrinking. Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do about it. New buildings especially suffer from this "ailment". Shrinkage, in turn, leads to a slight distortion of the sashes, which negatively affects the thermal insulation of the structure. The solution to the problem is to debug fittings.

Tool

Do-it-yourself adjustment of the sash pressure is performed using special eccentrics. During the turn of the hand, they go beyond the "recruiting grounds". These elements are installed along the frame perimeter. To ensure a firm grip, the eccentric is twisted clockwise.

Each described element has a risk. When she "looks" towards the street, this indicates a weakening of the pressure. If the pointer is facing the rubber seal, the sash is well pressed against the frame structure.

Hinges

The plastic window hinges also have their own clamping mechanism. The device is regulated by a hexagon. The rule is simple: the tongue is strongly recessed - the fit of the sash is tight. To extend it, turn the hexagon in the direction against the clock hand. When the hinges are on the right side, the turn is done in the other direction. Clockwise this time.

As you can see, there is nothing complicated - the skew of the sash can be removed easily and simply.

If the described actions do not help, and the cold does not disappear anywhere, then more serious problems have arisen. In this case, you will have to contact the masters.

Preparing the window for winter:

Replacing the rubber seal

What is a rubber seal? Its main task is to ensure a tight fit of the sashes to the frame. For greater reliability, it is made of rubber and does not let the cold through when it is closed.

If you properly care for it and regularly treat it with special compounds, the seal will last long enough. However, only a few PVC window owners care about the element, which is almost always hidden by the sashes. Many do not even know that it needs to be lubricated with special mixtures.

So it turns out that in about five years, the rubber seal loses its density. And when the product becomes unusable, it must be replaced.

To carry out the replacement, the glass unit is removed from the sash. We remove the glazing bead, take out the required element. The rubber seal is easy to change: the old one is removed, the new one is inserted through the groove. If you want, fix the product with an adhesive. Do not be embarrassed by the color difference - heaters are made of black and gray rubber, but there are no differences.

Attention! Be extremely careful when removing and inserting the glazing beads. The element is easy to break as it is very fragile. If the glazing bead becomes unusable, it will not work to install the glass unit back.

Alternative insulation methods

In addition to all of the above methods, there are some tricks that can help prevent cold entry. Let's consider a few of them.

Woolen blinds

This is a slightly unconventional, but effective method of insulating windows with your own hands. Ordinary blinds are simply wrapped in strips of woolen fabric, thanks to which they become reliable defenders from the cold penetrating through the windows in winter.

Heat Saving Film

Insulation of plastic windows can also be carried out with a heat-saving film - a fairly budgetary and at the same time effective option. But you need to glue the film so that there is no air left under it, that is, "bubbles", this will affect not only the appearance of the windows, but also the quality of thermal insulation.

This is the most modern way to insulate a room. With such a system, an oil heater is placed on the windowsill, and an electric heating coil is installed in the glasses themselves.

But if you decide to use just such a heating method, then it is better to perform the installation while the insulating glass units themselves are still being installed, but you can do this later by purchasing the system in a specialized store.

Curtains

It may sound strange, but curtains can protect you from the cold. They serve as an effective barrier to air and do not let the cold through in winter, if it does penetrate through the windows. In addition, passing through the curtains, the air, albeit not significantly, but warms up.

Window sill insulation

Cold air can also penetrate through the joints between the touching parts of the window sill. They need to be properly repaired. Also, in case of poor-quality work, "black holes" may remain under the window sill itself, so it must be dismantled and the joint between the slab and the window block must be additionally processed.

To do this, we open the small plugs on the windowsill, unscrew it with a screwdriver, and all possible cracks open to us from where cold air can flow.

Outcomes

Remember one simple thing - if the plastic window loses heat, there is a problem with one of the system elements. Eliminate the problems, the structure will regain its lost properties.

The only thing that requires full insulation is the slopes and, possibly, the window sill. No other work on thermal insulation is required. PVC windows are already protected from the cold at the highest level, since they were originally designed to create a comfortable atmosphere in any room.

A fairly simple way to reduce heat loss through the windows is a device on the outside of the screen window, made of heat-insulating plates. A screen lowered at night or closing shutters will reduce the heat flux emitted by the glazing to the outside, and create an additional air gap, which is good thermal insulation.

Rice. 1. Windows with roll-up screens:
a - vertical section;
b - horizontal section;
c - axonometry;
d - closing shutters;
d - descending blinds;
e - sliding shutters.

Inner shield

One of the options for increasing the thermal protection of windows is to install curtains or blinds from the side of the room. Their device allows you to reduce heat loss in the room as a result of reducing the flow of radiant heat. In this case, do not cover the surface of the heater under the window with curtains.

Rice. 2. Installation of curtains (a, b) and blinds (c) from the side of the room.

If the heat protection curtain, blinds or screen are made of an opaque material, then they are lowered onto the window when it gets dark. In this case, the thermal protection of the windows will increase for a certain period of time - at night, when the outside temperature drops and artificial lighting is used.

Rice. 3. Influence of curtain and screening of windows on heat loss,%:
a - window without curtains;
b - a window with long curtains covering the heater;
c - a window with short curtains that do not cover the heater;
d - a window with a screen on the outside of the glazing;
d - a window with short curtains and an outer screen.

Screen in the inter-glass space

It is possible to increase the thermal protection of windows by placing various screens in the inter-glass space. This method is based on the fact that when the screen is installed, the temperature difference between nearby surfaces decreases and the intensity of movement of air molecules and, consequently, convective heat transfer decreases. In addition, in some cases, when creating narrow air spaces, the speed of the ascending air flows is slowed down by the descending ones, which reduces the heat transfer by convection. The screen installed in the inter-glass space also reduces the radiant component of the heat flux.

The shading of light openings with devices placed between the glazing allows not only to reduce heat loss through the glazing in the cold season, but also to some extent adjust the illumination.

Rice. 4. Inter-glass curtain-jalousie:
1 - aluminum plate; 2 - flexible connection; 3 - box; 4 - cord.

Commercial blinds can also be used for standard double and split sash windows.

It is possible to place a roll-up curtain in the inter-glass space, which has an elastic screen made of metallized film, which is wound on a drum. At the end of the drum there is a coil with a cord, the end of which is released through the holes in the binding into the room.

Rice. 5. Rolling curtain:
1 - screen; 2 - drum; 3 - cord.

Of interest is also a combined curtain located in the inter-glass space, consisting of 2 interconnected canvases. Each of the canvases is attached to spools, one of which is at the top and the other at the bottom of the light opening. One of the canvases is made of transparent fabric or metallized film, the other is made of opaque material. A transparent canvas is installed in a window during the daytime, and a dark one - in the evening or at night. In addition to reducing heat loss through the window in the cold season, the combined curtain can also be used in the summer as a sun protection device (when installing a sheet of metallized film).

Rice. 6. Curtain with combined screen:
1 - upper drum; 2 - a sheet of translucent fabric or metallized film; 3 - lower drum; 4 - an opaque dark canvas; 5 - cord.

It is possible to significantly reduce heat loss through the windows using a volumetric curtain with a screen of folded metallized cloths located between the glasses. The screen webs are made of metallized film, and the inner web can be made of transparent film. The screen of the volumetric curtain is lifted by means of a cord connected by a rail to the lower edge of the screen and collected in a bag at the top of the window.

Rice. 7. Curtain with three-dimensional screen:
1 - a screen made of folded fabrics; 2 - bar; 3 - cord.

The analysis of the heat-shielding characteristics of the screen structures showed that the most effective volumetric curtain allows you to reduce heat loss by 38%. The blinds installed in the inter-glass space allow increasing the heat-shielding capacity of windows by 17 ... 19%, and the roll-up transparent curtains made of plastic film or fabric by an average of 28%.