Pet Doors in Glass by Dummies

A pet door installed in a glass patio door

In the days before the internet, about the only way you could spread total bull was to publish a book or some sort of yellow-journalism broadsheet, or perhaps film a political ad for TV. Take, for example, the ridiculous concept of a "hollow earth," one of many such hoaxes in the pre-internet age. In the age of the internet, ordinary (albeit greedy) folks have come out of the woodwork to explain how to perform impossible feats just because someone Googled them – and many of these impostors picked up their paychecks from eHow.com. Here's one now: Owen E. Richason IV, who pretended to explain to some poor sap, "How to Install a Pet Door in Glass"¹ at HomeSteady.com. Oh, the horror!

We'll admit right up front that such a thing is possible: you can, indeed, buy a doggy door (or kitty flap) that installs through the glass of a sliding patio door and perhaps even a full-light storm door What you can't do, however, is install the damned thing yourself. For one thing, you can't cut tempered glass, which is the type of glass in most doors. For another, you probably can't cut a double-pane glass door. Every manufacturer of through-glass doors specifically states that their product should be installed by a professional glazier!

But Richason IV thinks anyone can do it, having (supposedly) read a couple of books. One of them calls installing a pet door "a minor carpentry job," so we're pretty sure it doesn't discuss glass. The other? Also unlikely, since it's published by a power tool company. In fact, all Owen did was reword the copy for installing a pet door through a wooden entry door, simply cobbling together some bullshit about taking the glass door off its hinges (wha....?) or removing a sliding door from its track. Where Owen definitely screws the pooch in his "instructions" is when he blathers about cutting the glass: "...use a glass cutter to score the cutting template just drawn. Do this several times on one side until a discernible gouge appears in the glass. Turn the glass door over and score the other side, following the transparent cutting template and gouge. Score several times to cut through the glass. You may have to turn the glass door over more than once and repeatedly score it until the glass pops out under gentle pressure."

Ummm, no, Owen! You never cut multiple scores on the same line with a glass cutter, only one! And claiming that the glass just "pops out under gentle pressure" is, in the Antisocial Network's parlance, utter bullshit!

To cut a rectangular hole in glass, you need special tools including a diamond drill bit. You don't just buy a glass cutter at Lowe's and run it back and forth. regardless of what Owen claims, you don't run the cutter along the line of a score a second time or cut on both sides. Idjit.

Oh, yeah: and Owen doesn't even mention that not just any pet door will do: it has to be one designed for use through glass. What a jackass! For publishing complete and utter bull, we hereby bestow upon Owen E. Richason IV the singular honor of Dumbass of the Day. Well, it would be singular if this were Richason IV's first award, but it isn't: it's his fifth.

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/how_8373130_install-pet-door-glass.html

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