Window Screen Repair: A Vital Prep Revisited

Good window screens are a vital prep. Without AC, heat indoors in many places quickly soars through uncomfortable all the way to deadly. On the other hand, being eaten alive by mosquitoes isn’t much fun, and they also carry diseases. Having both the knowledge of how to repair screens and the tools on hand to get the job done are critically important preps to anybody who doesn’t live at the south pole.

Just about a year ago, I did an article about screen repairs. This second article is to share some lessons learned as well as to go back over a few of the core concepts.

First, the basics of prepping screens. This list is updated over the one presented in my previous article, and I will explain why in a bit.

What you need for screen repair:

• Fiberglass or aluminum 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 initially, but that proved insufficient and I needed to go larger.
• 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.

The screens at the cabin have been bugging us

It turns out that in the part of the country where the cabin is, there’s a type of grasshopper that loves chewing on fiberglass screens. Even though the cabin isn’t that many miles from our in-town location, the grasshoppers that have made such a mess of our screens don’t bother the in-town screens.

This is what fiberglass screening looks like after the Mutant Fiberglass-Eating Grasshoppers get after it.

The answer is replacing the fiberglass material with aluminum. On the plus side, the aluminum screens will stop the grasshoppers cold. On the downside, they are not nearly as transparent nor attractive as the synthetic material. They’re also a little harder to fix.

Same process, slightly different challenges

The main differences between the fiberglass and the aluminum screening are that grasshoppers don’t eat aluminum, aluminum is somewhat stiffer, and aluminum is messier to cut.

The stiffness ended up having an upside. The fiberglass wanted to wrinkle. The aluminum was easier to get fairly taut and wrinkle-free.

There was nothing nice about the ‘messier to cut’ part. A box cutter would no longer do it. Heavy scissors will, but it’s tough to get their cutting surface as close to the rim of the screen as you’d like. I ended up using hobby clippers (which are a lot like light wire cutters) in spots where the scissors were hard to get in, and scissors in other places. 

Trimming the aluminum screening is done only after the spline is well seated.

Tips and tricks

• Spline can be re-used if it’s still pretty pliable.
• Cutting the aluminum screen is going to produce very many tiny pieces of wire. Be prepared to keep them out of trouble.
• I cut the spline at each corner.  The original in the screens was formed into a right angle at the corners; but my roller wouldn’t seat it well in there. I got better seating when I cut each side just as far in as my tool would seat it tight.
• Getting screening into the groove isn’t a problem best solved by force. Go too hard and the screen tears. Work it in a little at a time and it stretches instead to make a nice fit.
• Fiberglass screening can be patched with small spare pieces. Hobby glue designed for polystyrene models works nicely. Wood glue does ok. Superglue did not hold.

I tried various glues on these patches. Hobby (for polystyrene models) glue was best.