If you had the pleasure of watching the latest 007 film, Spectre, then you may remember the impressive glass house positioned at the peak of a mountain in the Swiss Alps. In the movie, it was depicted as a high-end psychological treatment facility. However, it’s actually somebody’s house in real life!

The house is full of large sliding doorways and glass exterior folding doors. Despite the sub-zero outside temperatures, though, the environment within remains warm and toasty.

Just because you live in a cold climate doesn’t mean that you have to shutter up your home and obstruct your view of the surrounding beauty. In fact, with today’s energy-efficient glass and thermally broken folding doorframes, you can open up your entire home with large glass folding doors.

The trick is to customize your folding door system to be able to withstand extreme temperatures! In today’s post, we’re going to explain everything you need to look for in a folding door system if you want it to be a good fit for your Arctic paradise.

How To Pick A Folding Door System Designed For Cold Climates

If you live somewhere with harsh winters, then you’re well aware of the fact that the cold is an unforgiving enemy. Almost intelligently, cold air searches for any small crack or weakness in your home’s insulation, seeking to break through and freeze you out. Those who have older homes with outdated insulation or who don’t have energy-efficient doors and windows may find their electric bill increased substantially due to excessive furnace use in the winter.

Thanks to modern technology, however, it’s now possible to install large panoramic glass folding doors in your home without having to worry about the cold getting in!

Below, you’ll find a list of everything that you need to look for in a folding glass door system designed for cold climates.

1) Look For Thermal Breaking

One of the most important things to look for before you install folding doors is thermal breaking. This is especially important if you’re looking at aluminum or vinyl folding door systems. Both aluminum and vinyl are hollow inside. What this means is that the temperature from one side can easily pass through the hollow material and make it to the other side.

If you’ve ever felt the cold inside of a metal doorframe when there’s a heavy blizzard raging outside, then this system is not thermally broken. A thermally broken system wouldn’t let any cold air in or any warm air escape.

Thermal breaking is achieved by installing a thin layer of thermal-resistant polymer along the entire inner lining of the vinyl or aluminum folding doors. While it may not seem like much, this paper-thin layer of polymer resists temperature change, therefore preventing your expensive hot air to escape your house and vice-versa.

… Or Natural Insulation

As a side note, hardwood doors are naturally resistant to temperature change. Due to wood’s extremely thick density, wood exterior folding doors are just as resistant to temperature change as aluminum or vinyl folding doors.

2) Look For Moisture Resistance

Cold weather rarely comes without snow, ice, hail, and freezing rain. This means that you’ll need to select a material that’s able to withstand standing moisture. Sometimes, you may have a snowdrift that’s resting in front of your doors for days or weeks on end. If your folding door material isn’t waterproof, then the moisture can get into the system and start warping it, messing with the interior hardware, or leaking water into your home.

If you’re looking for moisture resistance, then we recommend going with an aluminum or vinyl folding door system. While wood is a great insulator (see the last header), it’s also susceptible to water damage and won’t perform well if you let a bunch of snow or ice sit on its surface for extended periods of time.

3) Invest In Low-E Glass Systems

One of the coolest advancements in glass technology is the advent of “low-E” glass. Low-emissivity glass is specially designed to prevent thermal transfer from one side to the other, achieving a similar effect as the polymeric thermal breaking technique we described above.

The reason that this is important is that folding door panels often have far more glass surface space than doorframe surface space. You can have the most thermally resistant doorframe, but if the glass isn’t up to par, then you’ll achieve nothing.

Low-E glass systems are designed by combining two or three panels of glass in parallel. They are installed and designed to create an airtight space between the two panes of glass. Then, Argon gas is injected into the vacuum between the glass window panes.

Argon is naturally resistant to temperature change and prevents the cold air from outside from penetrating through to your inner glass window pane. The reason why manufacturers use this instead of polymeric thermal breaking is that the polymer would reduce the clarity of the glass and ruin your view. Argon gas is invisible, so it won’t take away from your view!

4) Make Sure There’s A Swinging Door For Everyday Use

During the middle of winter, you’re probably not going to want to open up all of the folding door panels in your system. It will let all of your hot air out and bring the blizzard into your house. However, you’ll still want the ability to be able to go in and out of your doorway at any time.

This is why it’s important to make sure there’s a swinging door incorporated in your folding door installation. Most high-end systems feature a single panel that can disconnect from the other panels and can operate as a standard swinging door with a door handle, for easy entry and exit.

5) Look For Quality Weather Seals

Last but not least, you’ll want to make sure that whatever exterior folding door system you purchase has high-quality weather seals installed. Weather seals are the rubber gaskets that line the top, bottom, and sides of each door panel. In addition, to be thermally resistant, they also prevent water and moisture from snow and ice from seeping in between the cracks.

The Best Types Of Folding Doors For Cold Climates

So, all of that being said, you’re probably wondering what the best types of folding doors for extremely cold climates are. Since most folding door systems are customized to order, we figured that we would start by listing off all of the features that you need to look for.

However, if you’re just looking for the TLDR (Too Long, Didn’t Read), then these are the two best folding door systems that you can install in your cold climate home:

1. Thermally broken aluminum doorframe with low-E glass.
2. Thermally broken vinyl doorframe with low-E glass.

No system is 100% perfect, but these two systems will result in very limited temperature transfer from the outside to the inside, and vice versa. They’re also moisture-resistant, which makes them a great choice if your home sees a lot of snow, ice, and freezing rain.

Final Thoughts

There you have it! The ultimate guide to selecting the best exterior folding doors for cold weather climates. Thanks to today’s modern low-E glass and thermal breaking technology, it’s now possible to install entire glass walls and panoramic folding door systems in your home without worrying about losing efficiency!