Florida Project 25-2 Storm door repairs

 Florida Project 25-2:  Storm Door Repairs

The hurricane that passed through lower Florida did quite a lot of damage in the park.  Many homes had trim and fascia blown off, lots have roof damage and carport damage, and some homes suffered large scale damage, four of which had to be razed, so I'm told.

We were fortunate to have only minor cosmetic damage to the double-wide itself.  One issue was the storm door which goes from the carport entry area to the back yard.  The top pane glass slider always had the left ear missing so when you closed the door the pane rattled.  In the wind event, it blew out of the track completely and got disfigured a bit but did not break.  The fiberglass screen panel behind it came out from behind the rubber tubing that presses it into place tightly but did not tear or shred, and the bottom aluminum filler panel blew halfway out.

The mesh went back in easily with the rubber shim tubing and a presser-wheel.  I took the pane of glass to Lake Glass and Window and the guy came back, having re-set the glass corners so it was all squared up again, but didn't have the "ear".  He told me to just use clear silicon sealant and seal that pane in, because it was never necessary to articulate it up and down anyway.  I did just that and it looks great.

The bottom aluminum panel proved to be a little work.  I had to take apart the bottom piece of the frame in order to slide the panel back into its track.  A little reshaping was required but not much.  Once I got it in, I added some screws on one side and along the top to keep it in there tight.  All in all it looks pretty good.  Maybe we won't have any more high wind events for a few years.  If we do, we'll maybe end up just replacing the storm door and maybe even adding another so that we can keep leaves and pollen out of the entry area altogether.