A Prep You May Not Have Known You Needed: Screen Repair Kit

Let’s talk about a need you may not realize you have – screen repair.

Heat’s been on our mind as spring rolls toward summer.  Recently we did a post about keeping cool when the weather gets hot: 

It’s Gonna Get Hot: Preparing For The Heat In A Power Outage

A key part of that is something that used to be commonplace:  Well screened windows. 

The thing about screens, though, is they are somewhat fragile.  Our cabin’s only been out at The Place for less than five years; yet here’s what one of the screens looked like, they were definitely in need of screen repair:

Since the holes didn’t all appear at the same time, it seems some particularly ambitious bug has been chewing on it.  Door screens are particularly at risk, as one tends to shove on them when ones hands are full, or run into them with bundles.

In case you’ve never tried living a summer without effective screens on the windows, allow me to offer a pro tip:  You don’t want to.  Living with bugs is no fun.  It follows, then, that the ability to fix screens is a valuable prep.  It’s also a cheap and easily arranged prep, as well as stealthy.  I bet you’ve never seen a screen repair kit gain points on Doomsday Preppers!

What you need for screen repair:

• Fiberglass screening material.  It comes in rolls of various sizes.
• Spline, which is what they call the coils of rubbery material that seats the edges of the screening into a channel running along the sides of the screened region.  There are different widths.  My small cabin window used 120 size; the bigger screen on the front door used 150.
• A roller tool.  One end has a convex roller, used to indent the screening into the channel.  The other end has a concave roller that pushes the spline down into the channel to seat it properly.
• A good sharp cutting tool to trim the screen afterwards.

The prep items to buy would be the roll of screen, a roller tool, and the spline of the right size for your frames. Mine took 120 for the small window and 150 for a door frame.

See how I didn’t even mention needing a good stock of curse words?  It’s because I didn’t need those even once, despite my inexperience.

How you do the screen repair:

• Take the screen frame out of the window.  Models differ, I just fiddled and saw how to push the frame up a bit to slip the bottom end out, then pull down to pop out the top end.
• Pry the old spline (rubber cord looking thing) out of the channel that runs around the edges of the screened area.
• Pry out the old screen at a corner, then pull it out of the channel all the way around.
• Lay the new screen over the frame, smooth and wrinkle-free. It needs to extend several millimeters/about half an inch beyond the channel.
• Use the convex roller to push the screening into the channel.  If you don’t have enough overlapped screen to push into the channel and come out the other side, stop and shift the screening a little further over.
• Push one end of the spline into the corner of the channel on top of the screen.  Line up the rest of the spline over the channel.  
• Use the concave roller to shove the spline deep into the channel so the spline holds the screen in place.  The other hand is keeping the screening smooth and holding the next section of spline lined up.
• Do the other three sides similarly.  Hold the screen taut while you run the roller, but let it pull away from you as the screen depresses into the channel.  That screening will stretch a little (very handy for avoiding wrinkles), but stretching it too far would cause it to rip.
• If you do get a wrinkle, you can pull spline out, readjust, and try again.  
• Use the box cutter or whatever to trim excess screening from the far side of the spline and replace the screen frame in the window.

This was about the right overlap of the channel on the left and top sides. Left and top are already splined on this photo; that’s a roll of spline you see ready to do the right side.

Other Prepper Uses

It’s not just about fixing screens for doors and windows.  Preppers might need to build screens to air-dry vegetables, or to dry meat over a fire.  Aluminum screening can also be had for more robust operations; I haven’t tried using that yet.  You might also need to enclose something so it can sit outside without being bothered by bugs, or even build a little tent or bassinet cover to protect a baby when covering it up would be too hot.  Given a little framing material and some staples, finishing nails, or appropriate glue, the screen repair kit would serve for any of those purposes.