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Patio screen doors are a must for any home or cottage in a warm climate that is prone to mosquitoes and other airborne biting menaces.  We certainly don’t want to be bottled up in a sealed off house all day and night when there’s a great summer breeze itching to waft through.  Patio screen doors to have a few downsides however, and special attention is occasionally required to keep them functioning optimally.

Typically, a screen door can be installed in every doorway of your home or cottage; this is great for really opening up your home and allowing for some cross ventilation.  Screen doors all around, however, aren’t for everyone, but invariably any patio door will have a sliding patio screen door built in.

Stop me if this scenario sounds familiar to you.  You are headed out back through your house to enjoy a relaxing afternoon on perhaps a teak chaise lounger, book in one hand, ice cold lemonade in the other, not really paying attention to where you are stepping.  You don’t notice that the patio screen door is closed and you walk right through it.  Sound familiar?  It happens a lot, in fact just last weekend, while I was at a friend’s BBQ party, I counted 5 people who walked through their screen door, …including myself.  Sometimes these incidents will simply only knock the door off its track, and a simple reinstall will fix it.  Other times, however, some one will put their foot right through the screen; repairs will then become necessary.

Cats and dogs; I would say that cats are perhaps a patio screen doors worse enemy, followed closely by dogs.  Window screen don’t seem to take the same beating from animals that a screen door will because the windows are typically higher off the ground.  A cat will climb up a screen door sometimes seemingly just for the sake of wreaking havoc.  Dogs will sit there and claw the screen to shreads until the owner lets it inside.  In these cases the screen will have to be repaired and there are several options, including screen patches, screen replacements, and outright screen door replacement, the latter of which can hopefully be avoided.

For further information on patio screen doors and repair options, please see this informative article on patio screen doors, install repair or replace.