No matter what you do there will be the issue of ai tightness across whatever volume of air you have for the box. This added to the thermal bridge of the box itself

Why not have a locked one outside?

If you are determined a thin sheet material must be the best because of sectional area. I suspect plastic probably best

What's the problem with it going through the door?

There has to be a hole somewhere so surely better to be in an already lesser insulated part of the house?

Would opening the door when you are urgently waiting for your mail be that much of a problem? I wouldn't have thought it would be worth going through a cavity wall for anyway? Is it April the 1st yet or am I missing somthing here?

Posted By: RobinBMmm I guess my ideal would be an outside box with a little American-style flip-up flag to show "you've got mail" and a cooperative postie. Otherwise I'll be opening the outside door unecessarily to check if the post's come yet.

I worried about this when we first moved to a house in France where the postbox was at the end of the drive on the other side of an electric gate. However, after a few weeks of adjustment I got used to just checking for mail towards the end of the afternoon or if I'd seen the postman. Anything urgent would normally require a signature & he'd ring the bell.

If I was replacing my front door I would specify one without a letter plate & just put a steel box on the outside wall. These are available with bigger slots for small packets & separate latching doors for parcels when you're out. A porch is also useful for deliveries when you're out.

David

To DamonHD

My honourable friend, we are allied in energy-efficiency and cutting CO2 emissions cause. However, as obsessed with "zero carbon" home as you seem to be, the funny energy-saving things you had done for your letter box are as following (cited from your website http://www.earth.org.uk/towards-a-LZC-home.html):

• Fitted nylon-brush letterbox draught excluder for front door (~2008/05); £4 c/o Wickes.

• Curtain for single-glazed front door and side window 2008/08/05 (with scheme to deal with letterbox and cat-flap in door); <£45 c/o John Lewis and Wilkinson.

Is it an achievement to be proud of after new IdealGuardâ„¢ products were launched to the market in 2007?

Are you aware that a tight letterplate flap, secondary flap or draught excluder with brush strips do not work and make things worse? Just read this (source: http://www.energysaving.co.uk/energysavingtips.htm):

‘Tip 10 Letter box draughts
Letter boxes are notorious for letting in a draught. One solution is to fit brush strip over the letter box. However, the downside is that these devices make it almost impossible to push newspapers and magazines fully through. This means that you'll probably arrive home from work to find that the newspaper will be rolled up and sticking out of the letterbox, and creating a worse draught than you would have had before the brush strip was fitted. It's your call on this one.’

Also, you have been working out how to get your family's entire home carbon-neutral and decided that it ’is tough (expensive and probably needs too much physical space)’.

Before considering large-scale investments in energy-saving and advising complicated expensive things while being active in ‘helping small businesses and householders do their bit to combat global warming and climate change with energy efficiency,’ (source your company website: http://www.exnet.com/) a little one would have a far bigger effect. Small is beautiful.

Kind regards

Efim
You could have a word with this site owner if you want to promote your product, I would think that he has a scale of charges and one may suit you, just ask him.

Sorry guys if you see it that way...

As my records show, I have not visited this site more than just a few times. I have not used it for business. I saw people on this site asking genuine questions about letter box related problems. However, most answers they were receiving were amateurish at best or ignorant. That made me to place comments. By the way, I admit I was not aware about the 'guidance' threads.

The danger with a number of self-proclaimed consultants is that consumers get ripped off or into trouble. Do the majority of consumers and self-proclaimed consultants know that the draught excluder with brush strips product simply makes things worse?

As letterplates are universal in the UK, their numerous problems affect most properties. Loss of house heat and CO2 emissions are not the most dangerous ones. With multiple tragic cases of deaths and damage from the letter box crime and vandalism, such as arson and firework attacks, theft of mail, theft of car keys and access to door locks for burglary, this is another serious problem with the letter box that requires a solution. CCTV, alarms and advanced door locks cannot stop these shocking serious crimes.

Still, eliminating the letterplate would be inappropriate. It would mean replacing the whole door. Even in newly built properties it would be inappropriate due to a certain heritage issue here. Thus, an all-embracing technical innovation had to be found.

I felt it is important to shed some light here. All I tried to do is to point people in the right direction for their benefit. How could I do that without naming new product? What are the lengthy comments about Ecoflap, for example, if not advertising? However, virtually each time I made a comment (and I did a couple of times only) Damon springs up with condemnation.

In the circumstances, if I were you with a family and kids, I would use this information to rush to protect your letter box for their safety and peace of mind.

Sorry again guys, if you do not see it that way. Perhaps, strictly speaking, you have a point here, which you are ready to fight for, but Oscar Wild said "it is not necessarily true because a man dies for it."

Kind regards

I'm not sure why you'd make a hole in a cavity wall with a good U value, than in a door with a much poorer one?

Hi,

3 points from me

1) We did away with the letter box entirely and have a locked box. You can lift the lid to see through the slot whether there is anything in it. We have got use to walking out to check and often forget. Post comes after we have all left for the day anyway. Post can get damp if left in there too long, particularly bills which can get left in there far too long.
2) I think the point with mentioning the web site and then being controversial is that it’s difficult to resist having a look to see what the fuss is about. Then the web visits count shoots up which benefits the page holder as well being of interest for sponsored links. It’ll also come up on other searches as well, so I try very hard NOT to look at suspect web addresses posted by would be spammers.
3) You could try starting a post with a declared interest without mentioning the company name. Perhaps the moderators could try goggling peoples user names to see if they come up as a company name before giving them sign on. Won’t stop the determined spammer. That said there are quite a few user names on many forums which are the company related and why not if they are contributing as many do, and I wouldn’t want to be without the contribution made here by many, if not there is a danger that it would become an amatures club. They key is blatant website /burl posting in the initial first post. The moderators could put a “potential spammer” flag on them. If they continue to contribute to meaningful discussion then fine, if not then warned/questioned.
Cheers
Mike up North

HA! A lot of the big boys are aware of the annoyance spamming on forums creates and recognise it as being counter-productive. I was told that by the marketing director of a well-known maker of rooflights (not that one).

It's difficult sometimes to not sound like one of those celebrities recently outed as subliminal touters of goods, because if you've consistently had good experiences with a particular make of something in the course of your job then you're going to sound like a merchandiser because that brand name is going to keep cropping up.

Problems, problems. No one understands the negatives.

"Marketing rhetoric" is actually called "puff" in the trade! Trouble is, they start believing their own propaganda after a while, despite the object lesson that was Goebbels and the Nazi Party. They leave the same sort of bitter after-taste in the mouth! The only thing to get rid of that is to suck on a Jeremy Clarkson.

Don't make fun of the afflicted. Those Chelsea back streets can be murder. And anyway, you need a four-wheel drive to withstand the constant mounting of pavements so that you can park on double yellow lines! Do pay attention at the back.

Ha! Just had the classic experience of returning home to find the hallway like a fridge. Culprit? The new telephone directory stuck in the door creating about 16 sq inches of hole to the outside -1C.

Well, look at it this way: The clown who shoved it into the door saved a hell of a lot energy by not exerting him or herself and pushing it all the way through. It needed about a whisper of push to clear the last offending 1/4".

Thing is, Pete, we never use them now, preferring the online one, so it goes straight into the paper recycling skip anyway.

Does anyone know if there is any way to come off their directory list, because the same thing happens with Yellow Pages and that's a real challenge for them to get part way into the bloody hole! Well, they seem to see it that way.

I wonder if running a laptop with a power consumption of 100W is better or worse than a telephone directory. And no justifying it by saying you have the PC (or MAC or Linux Box) on anyway.