Pet Screen DoorYou can turn your screen door into a pet screen door using the new pet proof screen cloth available in many hardware stores. Pet screen cloth is seven to eight times stronger than regular fiberglas screening and will stand up to pets scratching and clawing at it. Pet protect screen doors are excellent for small dogs and cats. But they does have their limits. While the pet protect screen door material may not rip or tear, the cloth in pet screen doors can still be pushed out of its frame. Pet protect a screen doorLarge dogs especially will be able to push the cloth right out of the frame with the spline and all. Fortunately, its often posiible to just re-roll the spline and cloth back in the spline channel and your door is good for use again.If this keeps happening you could attach a thin aluminum plate to cover the area where the spline gets rolled in. The strip of aluminum should be screwed on to the screen door frame using No. 6 self tapping stainless steel sheet metal screws. The strip gets installed allaround the whole screen door to reinforce the spline and prevent from being forced out easily. Bear in mind though that if you make the screen stronger, the door itself may break when the dog runs into it. It's better to have the door jump out of the track if the dog runs into it. That way the door remains in one piece and can just be reinstalled. If you have steel rollers on the screen door. They should be able to put up with this abbuse. If you are installing pet screen yourself. Just remember you wont be able to reuse the same size screen spline or screen cord as you had in your old screen cloth. You will have to buy a size slightly smaller. Petscreen is thicker than regular screening so it takes up more room in the spline channel. The spline channel is the "U" shaped metal channel that runs all around the inside edges of your screen door. To intall pet-screen, you will need to clamp the petscreen on the screen door frame on all four sides. I use 1 inch wide spring clamps available from any hardware store. Once you have the screen clamped on, start rolling it in on the bottom right hand corner. With petscreen its best to pre-roll the screen a little bit at a time into the screen channel, then roll the spline in after. Pet screen is quite stiff and will often hold itself in while you roll the spline in. Pre-rolling the screen cloth in the channel also helps you not put too much tension on the screen. If theres too much tension, the sides of the screen door will "bow" in, and the door will not close properly. Click the Pet Screen Door to get back to the home page
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