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Sliding Screen Doors.


sticklee

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This might be just what someone is looking for. Just saw a display, at Big C Hang Dong, of sliding screen door/window products. One of each on display. The screens are pleated to allow then to fold back. Just outside Bangkok Bank. The only thing similar I have ever seen was some years ago, screens on retractable rollers.

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We have the accordian screens on every door, upstairs and downstairs, entrance door and balcony/patio doors, and prefer them over sliding or swinging ones. However, there are trade-offs to consider. I will list some thoughts that come to mind, including problems we had that have been eliminated.

  1. Expensive (can't be fixed)
  2. Take up next to no space -- major advantage -- folding into a 1" - 1 1/2 " channel on the side of each side of the door. The channels are set back so they do not protrude into the door opening on the side or top.
  3. On a double sliding doors (say to a patio), the screen come in from each side and close nicely in the middle with a very strong magnetic strip.
  4. New visitors have to be taught how to open them as most people have never seen them before. And even just telling them how to open them is frequently not enough as the magnetic strip is really strong and they are afraid to exert sufficient force. I conside that a neutral issue.
  5. Channel(s) are a box, 4 sided, with the bottom one on the floor inside the door. That can not be "set back" so you have to get used to stepping up, say, 2 inches above the eye's perception of the floor height as you come in. Otherwise you stub your toes (that has been a painful lesson for me).
  6. Orginally strung with gut (like old tennis racquets); now all gut has been replaced with nylong as the gut kept breaking.
  7. Nylon lines in the bottom and top channel require periodic cleaning and rubbing with either commercial grade olive oil (installer recommended) or synthetic lubricant (web source says suitable for nylon lines).
  8. All screens are guided to the closed position by pulling a vertical metal bar across the opening. That bar has plastic pulleys and rollers on the top and the bottom. Depending upon use and age, the pulleys break occasionally. In 6 years we have probably averaged 1 break per door.
  9. Our cat has learned it can leave or enter the house by pushing the screen at the bottom. Has not caused any damage so far. That is good. A stray cat we feed watched her and learned he can do it, too. That is bad (but then it is our fault for feeding him).

We like them enough we will keep them in good repair and even completely replace them if needed.

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Is the display still at Big C Hangdong? I would like to drop by to check out, seeking glass sliding windows and doors for my studio unit.

Anyone has good, reasonably priced contractors to recommend for renovation work? Thanks in advance.

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We have the accordian screens on every door, upstairs and downstairs, entrance door and balcony/patio doors, and prefer them over sliding or swinging ones. However, there are trade-offs to consider. I will list some thoughts that come to mind, including problems we had that have been eliminated.

  1. Expensive (can't be fixed)
  2. Take up next to no space -- major advantage -- folding into a 1" - 1 1/2 " channel on the side of each side of the door. The channels are set back so they do not protrude into the door opening on the side or top.
  3. On a double sliding doors (say to a patio), the screen come in from each side and close nicely in the middle with a very strong magnetic strip.
  4. New visitors have to be taught how to open them as most people have never seen them before. And even just telling them how to open them is frequently not enough as the magnetic strip is really strong and they are afraid to exert sufficient force. I conside that a neutral issue.
  5. Channel(s) are a box, 4 sided, with the bottom one on the floor inside the door. That can not be "set back" so you have to get used to stepping up, say, 2 inches above the eye's perception of the floor height as you come in. Otherwise you stub your toes (that has been a painful lesson for me).
  6. Orginally strung with gut (like old tennis racquets); now all gut has been replaced with nylong as the gut kept breaking.
  7. Nylon lines in the bottom and top channel require periodic cleaning and rubbing with either commercial grade olive oil (installer recommended) or synthetic lubricant (web source says suitable for nylon lines).
  8. All screens are guided to the closed position by pulling a vertical metal bar across the opening. That bar has plastic pulleys and rollers on the top and the bottom. Depending upon use and age, the pulleys break occasionally. In 6 years we have probably averaged 1 break per door.
  9. Our cat has learned it can leave or enter the house by pushing the screen at the bottom. Has not caused any damage so far. That is good. A stray cat we feed watched her and learned he can do it, too. That is bad (but then it is our fault for feeding him).

We like them enough we will keep them in good repair and even completely replace them if needed.

Any place you can recommed to replace the gut wiring with the nylon strings?

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There are dozens of companies in BKK selling this type of system and if you are not familiar with what the OP is talking about check this Oz supplier out or google pleated insect screens.

pleated_systems.jpg

Noise's pro and con list is spot on except I would add the following extras:

  • Not great where small children are around. Even if your's get trained properly, visiting kids have to be restrained from burrowing under the screen like the cat.
  • Note that unless you have bi-fold doors or ones that slide back to leave a full width opening, there is little advantage in choosing this type over the conventional sliders.

We have them on all doors and windows and all except one were bought from a company called Mperor who have a small stall in the parking area of what is now Big C Extra and I think the women who runs the stall at Big C Hang Dong (it's in the area between the main building and Home Pro) is an agent for them too. The good news is that they were well priced and look good but the bad news has been that installation was sloppy, four have had to be fixed due to poor design of the running gear (one of them three times) and they seem unable or unwilling to fix them locally and ship them to BKK by tortoise resulting in no screens for months at a time. The only one not supplied by them was (I think) from Australia and a much more expensive and better animal altogether.

The moral here is don't try to do this on the cheap. If you are seriously interested in this product hop on a plane down to the IMPACT Centre in BKK (it's just a couple of miles from Don Muang) where the Architect Exhibition is on until May 5th. I guarantee you'll find a dozen suppliers and be able to really check out the goods.

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  • 6 years later...

When we remodeled our condo recently we installed a dual cat door system between the living area and the balcony.  The cats have to pass though two cats doors to go between the two areas, going through a small closet that we call "the cat closet" because it's where their litter box is located.  I had a devil of a time communicating the design of this closet to both the architect and the carpenter because they didn't understand why I wanted the bottom half to have doors that opened from the balcony and the top half to have shelves accessible from the living area.  But, finally got it built.

 

Anyway, the cats soon figured out how to work the cat doors and now will use them exclusively to go to and from the balcony, even if the sliding door to the balcony is open.  They leave the balcony screen door alone, too.

 

Oh, we have decorative ironwork over the balcony opening so they can't open a branch of the Pattaya Flying Club and, of course, no problem with stray cats figuring out how to use the double cat door system.  

 

Before we had the cat doors, I'd heard that cats will use them exclusively once they become a habit, but hadn't believed it until I've seen what a "screen saver" they are.  

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On 11/1/2019 at 3:02 PM, NancyL said:

Anyway, the cats soon figured out how to work the cat doors and now will use them exclusively to go to and from the balcony

I had a wonderful cat door installed, private balcony and ramp to the back garden...

The cat still sits in the front entry hall and cries until he is formally let out the front door... :coffee1:

 

 

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1 hour ago, sfokevin said:

I had a wonderful cat door installed, private balcony and ramp to the back garden...

The cat still sits in the front entry hall and cries until he is formally let out the front door... :coffee1:

 

 

Maybe it's because we moved the cats into a place new to them and they had no other choice but to learn to use the cat doors.  If they're installed after they know they can use a regular door, it may be more difficult.

 

When we had our greenhouse/nursery operation in the U.S., we installed dog doors on some of the greenhouses and buildings.  The dog would use them to exit, but never to enter.  Instead she'd stand outside the regular door and bark to be let back in.  It was a real pain on the nights when we slept in the screened-in "summer house".  She'd exit through the dog door and then go to the back door of our home, barking to be let in, forgetting that we were spending the night in the summer house.

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1 hour ago, NancyL said:

Maybe it's because we moved the cats into a place new to them and they had no other choice but to learn to use the cat doors.

He learned quickly how to use it when a particularly LoSo neighbor cat comes around... The grippy AstroTurf balcony we built is their favorite spot for late night karaoke...

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