Pet Screen Doors - How to build strong screen doors

There is a limit to how strong you can build a screen door. Theres no point in building it stronger than the patio door frame its installed in. To build a pet screen door you need a frame that wont fall apart if it gets struck by a speeding dog, (or human). You want metal rollers that wont break when the door gets hit. Ideally , you just want the whole screen door to jump out of its frame rather than breaking.

Nowadays with pet screen cloth, we dont need to use stainless steel and other far more expensive metal screening materials. The only problem with pet screen is that a big dog can still push the whole cloth and the spline right out of the screen door frame. To make a strong screen door you need a stronger way of holding the pet screen cloth in.

One easy way to do this is to screw a long strip of aluminum 1/16” inch thick by 3/4” wide over top of the spline groove, to prevent the spline and the cloth from being forced out. You will need to put screws spaced every 3 inches or so to provide constant pressure around the frame. This may not look the nicest, but it will make your screen door very strong .

Some companies get around the need to put many screws by using a metal spline forced in using a hydraulic ram in the shop. This is very secure but if you ever do need to to change the screen cloth, you wont be able to do it yourself. And very few glass shops have hydraulic rams or metal spline for that matter. So maintenance may become a problem.

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