The Second, Second Best Blog

With the recent passing of the Bennet family dog, some of Anna’s things were given to us to benefit Yuki when she visits, one of which was the dog door for the patio slider.

Patio sliding doors are pretty much all the same, right? Ought to be able to just take the dog door out of their slider and put into my mine, no problem. Well, not quite. First difference was that their slider was on the right while mine is on the left. That turned out to be easy. The latch is held in place with two screws and is reversible: unscrew it and put it on the other side. The next difference: their door is about an inch and a 1/4 taller than mine. Still not too hard. The dog door frame is aluminum and was fairly easy to cut down to size on a band saw. Sorry Bennets, it will no longer work in your door.
OK, so now the dog door is in place. Let’s see how the slider shuts and locks… It doesn’t. My slider is just a smidge thicker so it will not fit all the way into the channel on the dog door frame, therefore the latch won’t, and the door cannot be locked. This is not as big a deal as it at first seems. We were locking it with a half inch dowel in the lower channel anyway. Just cut it to fit in this position.

That was actually OK…until some winter weather arrived. The wind just blew right through because the sliders only make a (fairly) good seal when the frames of the stationary pane and the slider are aligned. As it is, there is about a half inch gap between the frame and the glass.

I was somewhat at a loss as to how to fix this problem and resorted to Home Depot for ideas. Here is what it took:
Some neoprene rubber, the kind used for garage door top and side seal, some double-stick mounting tape, and some white sheet metal screws, the kind used for aluminum rain gutters. It is rather tricky getting this work. The rubber must be mounted on the frame so that it does not quite touch the glass. Otherwise it binds against the glass and makes the door really hard to open. The double-stick tape is not strong enough by itself and the rubber just peels off after opening and closing the door a few times. The sheet metal screws prevent that. Just be very careful when drilling the pilot holes in the frame that you do not hit the glass.