Door replacement in Austin, TX: patio doors for backyard living, saving or replacing old bungalow entries, upgrading builder doors and blocking sun heat.
Austin spends a lot of the year outside. Between the mild stretches of spring and fall, plus summer evenings once the heat finally lets up, the back patio gets used like an extra room. That makes the door between the house and the yard one of the most important openings in an Austin home. It's often one of the leakiest, too.
Front doors matter as well, for curb appeal and for keeping heat out of the entry. The right choice depends a lot on the age and style of your house.
Sliding glass doors are still the most common patio door in Austin. Older aluminum sliders tend to leak at the center where the panels meet, and their rollers wear down until the door takes two hands to move. A modern vinyl or fiberglass slider with double-pane low-E glass seals tighter and blocks much of the sun's heat.
There are other options worth a look:
Large glass doors facing west need low-SHGC glass, or the room behind them will be hard to cool. Our page on patio doors compares the styles in more detail.
Bungalows and older homes in Austin's central neighborhoods often still have their original wood front doors, sometimes with glass panels or a transom above. Those doors are worth saving when the wood is solid. Stripping and refinishing, new weatherstripping and a properly set threshold can make an old door seal far better than you'd expect. If the house is in a local historic district, a replacement may need city approval, so check before ordering.
When the door is cracked, rotted at the bottom or badly warped, a fiberglass door with a wood-grain finish can come close to the original look without the upkeep.
Many suburban Austin homes came with basic steel entry doors. They're secure enough, but they dent, and the factory finish fades fast on a sunny porch. Moving up to fiberglass gets you a better-insulated door that resists dents and can be stained or painted. Taller 8-foot entries are common on newer homes and look sharp, so make sure the replacement is sized for that height. If you have an HOA, check its rules on door color and style first.
Before replacing any door, see whether the problem is really the door. Look for daylight around the edges when it's shut, a gap at the bottom you could slide a pencil through, weatherstripping that's cracked or missing at the corners, or a door that has to be slammed to latch. A new sweep or a strip of weatherstripping costs little. If the frame is out of square or the slab is warped, though, those fixes won't hold for long.
Doors with decorative glass, sidelights or a transom bring light into a dark entry, but every pane is a path for heat. Choose low-E glass for any glass in a new door. And be careful with full-glass storm doors on sunny entries. In Austin heat they can trap enough warmth to warp weatherstripping and damage the finish on the main door.
If the doors are drafty, the windows may be too. Our windows guide for Austin covers glass ratings and historic homes, and the Austin roofing article explains how the roof and attic shape indoor heat. You'll find more about our work in the city on the Austin page.
A drafty entry is easy to blame, but bigger leaks sometimes hide around recessed lights or the attic hatch. Our free home energy audit checks all of it. Reach out to Texas Energy Pros and we'll set up a time that works for you.
