Our (ordinary human) doors are stamped steel filled with foam, and do not have flat surfaces. There are fake panels formed into the steel. Putting a flat flanged pet door into this will leave gaps of at least a quarter inch, facing upward into the weather. How should I manage this?
Most instructions picture a completely flat door to start with. The one web site I found that shows a door with fake panels similar to ours just says to cut a hole and insert the pet door assembly. It doesn’t even mention caulking or gasketing at all. In the illustration, there are upward facing gaps. Is this really proper?
Also, what happens to the storm door - it just has to be removed, right? The storm door has removable panes (for screen or window), but there’s a solid region at the bottom that would really require putting the pet door in pretty high if we were to leave the storm door in place and remove the lower pane.
I’d probably just make sure I got a really tight fit and then caulk the top and sides and leave the bottom open so if water did get in, it would have a fighting chance of getting back out.
Depending on how clean you want the installation to look, you might even consider getting a strip of something like Ice and Water to go from the door, over the top weather seal. That way water runs over it instead of behind it. Just a small strip. As long as the pet door, plus maybe a half inch on either side and an inch or two wide. Hopefully it’ll conform to all the panels nicely. I hear that stuff sticks to everything if it’s nice and warm.
Also, yeah, I would take the storm/screen door off. Even if you did take the lower panel off, that would mean the dog would have to jump pretty far to not get caught in the middle.
Are you planning to lock this during the day? A very reputable source tells me that people with dog doors end up with problems. The neighbors can get annoyed if you wind up with a dog outside barking all day long.
One last thing. This sounds like a really good Ask This Old House question. I’m sure Tommy would come up with something clever and easy that hopefully wouldn’t involve replacing the door.
you make the area for the pet door flat. use trim strips, shims to build up the distance for the pet door perimeter and mounting points, it might take some shaving, planing and sanding of each piece. measure and cut the pieces, glue them onto the door with adhesive. you might to make things look nice and clean well put wood filler or epoxy to make all surfaces and edges smooth.
the pet doors have to swing freely. that would mean no storm door or a storm door in a vestibule, either large enough for a person like a small airlock porch or add framing to remount the storm door enough inches out so the pet doors are totally free.
The typical carpentry solution for a fenestration in an uneven wall or door is make a frame that is as wide or slightly wider than the widest section of the door. This allows the external envelope to be properly sealed and gives your pet door an even frame to be installed in. You can flash the top of the fenestration to keep water out if there is exposed frame on top.
Have you considered going through the wall? This way you could possibly build a doggy lobby or hall outside with doors at both ends for better weatherproofing.
We faced this problem a while back and resolved it by buying a new door with the pet door pre-installed by special ordering through a Home Depot like place. The door was in poor shape anyway, so this was OK, but not the cheapest solution.
The previous door also had a pet door and the gaps were caulked.
Joey P, this is actually for cats, and lets them go out to a fenced yard, so no neighbor complaints. We have a portable cat flap insert for the sliding glass door now, but we’re tired of squeezing past it!
If you open a hinged door wide enough to walk through normally, why do you have to squeeze out the slider?
And, since it’s for cats:
I saw a very clever arrangement once in a “for sale” - the agent couldn’t figure out what is was. She was not a cat person.
The trouble with pet doors is that critters other than your pets will figure out their use.
This guy removed a pane of glass from an elevated window, and built a tunnel by cutting the bottoms out of trash cans. The outside end rested on a sawhorse - not attractive, but make your tunnel as pretty as you like.
The point being that, in order to get in, a critter has to jump up into the tunnel - opossums, raccoons, squirrels can’t. Cats can. Install your door up a couple of feet and put a tube of some sort. It will take the cat about 30 seconds to figure it out.
Oh - this was in a warm area, so there was no flap - build a platform, or put a box for cat to jump on to be at door level under the door.
We had this same problem. In the end, we replaced the double glazing of the door (or in one case a nearby window) with single pane glazing and then had the glazing guy pre-assemble the cat flap in the glass. It took up a corner, was neatly caulked in and worked fine.
Make sure the cat has perches on both sides of the pet door so she can easily get in and out.
Or you could temporarily replace the door with an wooden one.
I’ve also seen these doors mounted in a basement window. They replaced one of the panes of glass with a piece of waterproof plywood, with a hole cut in that to hold the cat flap. As it was high up near the basement ceiling, they installed a board shelf inside the window, with a carpeted 2x6 board running alongside the wall leading up to the flap. Took their cata less than a minute to figure out how to use it.
Only problem they reported was that they liked to lock it at night, and the location high up made that difficult – they ended up placing a footstep below the window to make this easier for the shorter members of the household.
Our cat door now is a panel that fits into the opening and takes up about ten inches of it. The door now closes against its edge. Our opening is perhaps 25% narrower than normal. Besides, I am a few percent wider than normal, though that isn’t really the door’s fault.
