I have a mobile home (it’s less than 15 years old), and we have problems with condensation forming on the inside of the rear exterior door when it’s cold out. The door is a metal insulated door. The problem is when the temperature gets below freezing, the door freezes closed. The inside of the door frame has a metal lip across the top and that is where it freezes, and last winter it was bad enough that we had ice on the inside top of the door. What can I do to fix this short of building another room on the back of the house? We live in middle Tennessee so it’s not like we have really cold winters but I am worried that the condensation will cause the door frame to rot. As far as I can tell it seals well, but when it’s below freezing you can walk by the door and tell the temperature change as you walk by.
Thanks for your help,
Daniel
Tom: I think the only thing you could do, and with mobile homes it’s difficult to remodel and do different things, is change the door to a better insulated door. It’s just then it’s metal. Metal’s going to get cold. All the heat that you heat with it sucks around the corner and in the outside and it’s gone, so it’s staying very cold. It’s just like a cold beer can that’ll form ice and condensate on it. What you could do, believe it or not, is put a layer of foam board right directly to the inside surface like a koozie on a beer can and if the air from the inside of the house doesn’t touch the actual metal but you have an insulated something on top of it, it will stop that problem. It might freeze shut, that one I don’t know if I can handle. But the sweating it will stop because the air won’t do it.
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