Question About Larson Storm Door

by Robert
(Florida)

Top rail pulled off by retractable screen

Top rail pulled off by retractable screen

The door was working fine til yesterday I lowered it just for the airflow through the house later I went to close it and found one corner of the frame separated as per the picture. I have looked at it and tried to at least slide it back together but looks like it may be toast is this a fixable thing?

The part that is broken it the top part that the screen slides into on top of the window

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Sep 30, 2022
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by: Adrian

Thanks Robert;

Looks to me like the top left hand plastic corner has broken and needs replacing
The window frame is usually held together with 4 corners. Older storm doors used metal corners which hardly ever broke, the top rail was screwed into the corner with a tiny screw or the frame was crimped onto the corner.

It's also possible that there are no corners and they are using a piece of plastic wedged into the frame on the left and right to hold the glass frame top rail on. In that case you need to carefully fit the glazing spline back on the glass and then slide the top rail back on. Then look for a safe place to put a screw through the top rail to stop it coming off again.

You might be able to find a local glass & window shop that does repairs. You might have to take the panel to them to get it fixed if they wont do service calls.
There are hundreds of different kinds of plastic corners and it's going to be impossible to know which one is used before you take the glass out.
If you have the corner it's like a 30 minute job to replace, the worst of it is prying the old broken pieces out of the frame.

From the appearance of the frame it looks similar to older Sears doors from the 1980's. In those doors you had to grab the bottom panel and slide it to the left or right until the left or right edge came right out of the frame. There was a piece of foam rubber inside the frame that compressed enough to remove the window. That's going to be tricky with the top rail hanging off. You will need to temporarily put it back on to cover the sharp exposed edge of the glass before trying to move it sideways.

As well that cross bar will have to be removed before the lower glass will come out. You have the retractable screen and the bottom of that slides into a groove on that broken top rail. You might have to remove the whole screen assembly as well when you get the edge of the lower glass out.

Hopefully its just the top rail that needs to be jammed back on and screwed in place

Hope this helps


Reply

From what I have seen on the corner it is plastic I was able to slide that corner up and out of the track so to speak and the piece of plastic was square like the 2 corners meet and the plastic piece held it together lol I did get the glaze strip back in place not sure how I didn’t break the glass but was able to push the window/screen all the way up so it will lock in place guess next step when I have time is to remove top glass with screen I assume it can be done and fix it properly

thank you for your help!

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