How can I open the back door to the deck? It snowed yesterday and the door seems to be frozen shut now. Won't open when unlocked. HELP, please!

My guess is that as the weather warms, the ice holding the door stuck in its track will melt. So just wait. If you want to hasten matters and if you can get to it from steps, shovel your deck, especially the area closest to the door.

When you push on it to open it, can you feel what part of the door is stuck? Does it feel like the lock area is the problem, or is the opposite side blocked by something? Or does it feel like there’s ice on the bottom of the door?

Wave a hair blower around it.

Try to thaw with blow dryer or de-icer from auto store. Spraying WD-40 all along the seals also helps. You will need to reapply it liberally throughout the winter to keep them from freezing.

If you do try a hairdryer, and it works, be sure to dry the area well afterwards, and apply something like WD40 to the tracks so that the moisture caused by all that heat doesn’t freeze and stick your door even worse than before.

If you don’t have a hair dryer, a leaf blower will probably work, if you blow inside air.

Oh, fuck! DO NOT use a hairdryer! You could shatter the window doing that!

@filmfann, probably not if the blower is on low heat, or perhaps even cool.

@filmfann That… seems unlikely. I don’t think it could heat the glass quickly enough to make it shatter. Boiling water might.

If you have time to wait for this to resolve, just set a space heater in the room with its heat output directed toward the slider. That will provide a gentle enough heat that won’t damage the glass in the door – @filmfann‘s concern is not misplaced! – and you won’t have to stand there for however long it takes to fix the problem, either.

After the door is opening and closing normally, wiping all the moisture away that you can will help, and definitely using WD-40 (its name means “Water Displacement”, and the common formulation was the 40th attempt to get it right) to help keep it that way.

Go out back onto your deck and pour warm not hot water in the track. It probably has ice in it.

Then dry it out and oil it.

I think @MadMadMax has the best answer in the thread.

That’s what we used to do—all the time. It’s one of the many things you do if you live up north.

@MadMadMax, one night soon after moving into a big, very old house in a small town just north of Milwaukee there was a snowstorm, and when I went downstairs next morning I saw something I never, ever saw growing up in Texas—the whole north side of the house INSIDE had a thin layer of frost on it, not just the sliding glass door but the walls too. What a day that was!

Yep I back @filmfann and @CWOTUS on this one. I have watched a roommate blow dry a crack right into a window. Also seen a chip in the windshield turn into a crack that reached both sides of the windshield in under a minute when they have not been filled.

Prevent more moisture from getting into the door by removing snow in the area and possibly make a tiny over hang so it doesn’t happen again. Identify what is iced. On the warmest day use a leaf blower or space heater from the out side in. First warming the whole area and not applying to direct of heat. Or get a really strong determined person to jostle the door on its track.

Then

@Unbroken But the OP has no reason to use the blowdryer on the window itself… just on the track. Were your friends applying a blowdryer to the glass? I think we would all agree that’s a bad idea.

The track is connected to the glass and dependent on how big the frame is there could be overlap.

But you have a point.

I back @filmfann, @CWOTUS, and @Unbroken here. I’d probably forgo the hair dryer unless you’re really patient and stay 18” or so away. I’m too impatient for that.

I’ve also seen warm water break frozen glass, so I’d be leery of that. Plus, if it doesn’t work, you’ve made the problem worse, not to mention created an ice patch right outside the door.

Don’t pour the water on the glass. Closely pour it on the runners. It works all the time and in over 30 years I never broke any glass. If the door is iced in, I wouldn’t worry about creating an ice patch LOL its all icy anyway. Just get it to move, dry it off, silcon it and go inside and have some hot chocolate.