Tag: door weather seals

Final Chapter on the Pella Bottom Door Seal Saga

Today, we finally got the right bottom of the door weather seal—only not from Pella. We gave up on them after they crapped out after the third try to ship us the right seal. The third one was an even worse failure than the second. It was 51 inches long and the barbs were not spaced right.

I got transferred to a Pella Corporation supervisor who told me that the issue should have been handed to their service department long before it got so far into this circus of mistakes. So supposedly, the supervisor contacted the service department—who never contacted us. Apparently, the supervisor didn’t stay on the case to ensure we got the right item because we never heard back.

Pella just dropped us.

We finally found Hass Wholesale in South Bend, Indiana (update 3/4/2024: no longer has a website, apparently). The story is a little complicated. Evidently, Pella manufactured the bottom door seal we needed at an Ohio factory until around 2010 or so and then shut down the factory.

On the other hand, the invoice on the item we got from Cloud Brothers Wholesale LLC (evidently associated with Hass) identified it as “Pella-Pease 2/8 Bottom Sweep from (2001-2014 5/8” Kerf.” UPS delivered it.

The Pease company also makes their own door seals which would have fit our Pella door. They even call it a Pella seal. But they manufacture them and have nothing to do with Pella. They also don’t make them in the 32-inch length.

Both Pease and Hass sell Pella bottom drive on door seals just like the one we needed. I think Hass gets some of them from Pease. I don’t know what relationship they might have with Pella. Pella never commented on one of our messages indicating we were aware of Hass Wholesale inventory containing an item Pella apparently was not able to find in their own inventory.

Enough of them were available such that Hass Wholesale was able to ship us the right item 3 days after we ordered it.

Pella Corporation in Iowa fumbled the ball repeatedly for more than a month.  

We give Hass Wholesale two thumbs up for a job well done. On the other hand, Pella Corporation customer service representatives (in Pella, Iowa no less) while friendly, couldn’t get the job done at all. Pella gets two thumbs down.

Of course, we were nervous about installing the seal, but it looked almost exactly like the old one and the measurements were spot on. The barbs didn’t run the whole length of the seal, but they really didn’t need to be that long. The important thing is that they were 5/8’’ center on center wide to fit the kerfs.

We were a little hesitant about doing the job today, because there’s a Heat Advisory (temperatures up to 105 degrees) and we had to take the entry door off the hinges and air condition the garage so to speak.

There was not much effort other than I used a rubber mallet to help drive the seal securely into the kerfs. I also hammered a couple of small nails into both ends. I didn’t need to adjust the height of the threshold. The door closed securely and the seal was snug.

We had to push towels against the entry door bottom for weeks and worried about bugs and energy bills, waiting for Pella to send us the right seal. We don’t have to do that now.

I have no idea how many people actually replace their bottom of the door seals. I wish them luck if they are on Pella doors. You might want to just go with Hass Wholesale to save time.

Weather Sealing Your Door Jambs

The other day I mentioned that I put off replacing the weather sealing around our sun room door because of the heat. Yesterday, I did it in the morning before it got to 100 degrees, because there was another Excessive Heat Warning.

I saw a YouTube video of how to do this, and a guy was pushing the replacement strip in the kerf with a chisel. “Kerf” is a just fancy word for a slot in which you push the tab of the strip into the door jamb.

As I watched the video, I thought to myself, “I hope he doesn’t tear a hole in the strip with that chisel.” Then the guy actually warned viewers to be careful not to rip the weather seal with any sharp tool used to push the seal into the kerf.

It’s actually pretty easy to push the seal into the kerf. You just press it in with your fingers. The hard part is trying to keep your hands and work area clean while you’re peeling out the old strip. You do this by gripping it with needle nose pliers and pulling it out of the kerf just to get it started. This can lead to what amounts to a mini-rock slide spilling on the floor and maybe even in your face. You might think this would make you look like you worked really hard, mitigating any fallout from the mess you made.

Of course not! That’s because it’s hard to explain to your better half why there’s a pile of dirt, pieces of old seal on the floor, and grime on the fresh, new seal (the color of which is, of course, white) in addition to the swarm of hornets and flies, sparrows, the odd skunk—which you tried to hide by wiping things off with a new sponge that is earmarked for other cleaning jobs around the house, and calling pest control.

You can either try to measure the strip first and cut it before installing it or just start pressing it in at one end and estimating where to trim it (You can easily trim with a pair of stout scissors; don’t use the pair in the kitchen) when you get to the other end.

I tried the latter and the technical term for the unfortunate resulting quarter inch piece across the top of the doorway I added to make up the shortfall is “tacky.” Because of the orientation of the kerf tab, you can’t just flip it around to make it look like there’s no gap. That trick never works, apparently.

Fortunately, I’m entitled to a limited number of tacky handy man moves. Good luck.

So Much Depends Upon the Serial Number

You’ll probably think I’m nuts and you’d be right, but a problem with ordering a replacement part for something from Pella Windows and Doors Company made me think of William Carlos Williams’ poem “The Red Wheelbarrow.” The poem is in the public domain because it was published before 1927, so I guess that means I can include it in this post:

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens

–William Carlos Williams

I’m not a poetry scholar and I have no idea what this poem written by a doctor means. One writer says that it’s probably impossible to get its meaning because it’s part of a much longer book-length work, “Spring and All” and the poem was split out of its context.

My connecting it to the Pella company has nothing to do with “Spring and All” or chickens or red wheelbarrows. It has to do with trying to order a replacement weather stripping part for a Pella door depending on having the right serial number.

It’s a bottom of door seal, made by Pella specifically for a specific Pella door on a house we moved into a couple of years ago and which was built over a decade ago. We have the size and type of the door, and the size and other important dimensions of the weather seal, which required us to take the door off the hinges in order to remove the old one and install the new one—if we can get one.

It’s a special type of bottom of door seal, which you can’t just run over to Lowes or Menards to pick up. In fact, they’ll tell you that you have to buy it direct from the Pella company.

It’s a peculiar looking seal. It fits into kerfs on the bottom of the door. I didn’t even know what a kerf was until we had to get a replacement bottom of the door weather seal. It’s just a slot into which some other piece fits into. There are two raised barbs or blades which fit into slots along the bottom of the door. The blades have to be exactly 5/8 inch apart and they run the length of the seal.

It’s called either a kerf seal or a drive-on door bottom seal, I guess because you drive it into the slots. The old one was stapled at both ends of the door bottom. It was 32 inches long. It was 1 and ¾ inches wide. The blades were in the kerfs doing what blades do in kerfs, which is securing the seal to the door bottom. I pulled the old one off and would need to drive the new one on.

That is, if we can acquire a new one. It turns out the right replacement can’t be found just by knowing the exact dimensions. You have to know the serial number of the door or the serial number of the seal.

The seal is in shreds. If it ever was marked with a serial number, it was destroyed long ago.

The door, which a Pella representative will patiently tell you, should have a serial number on a label fixed to the top hinge on the door. It’s not on the middle or the lower hinge—it’s on the top hinge, which would be fine if it were but it’s not.

How long can you expect a paper label to last on a door hinge that is more than a decade old?

It doesn’t matter if the hinges are all stamped permanently with the word “Pella.” If you don’t have the serial number, you don’t have anything.

All we want to know is whether we can purchase a replacement seal. Well:

The Damned Serial Number

so much depends

upon

a multi-character

serial number

missing in

action

nowhere to be found upon the

item