Storm Door Glass for Dummies

Cole Sewell storm door detail

We're well aware that about half the people who search for information on the 'net are, to be polite, of below-average intelligence,¹ so we expect them to say and do stupid stuff. Heck, we've been known to do stupid stuff from time to time (although not in recent memory). Whatever the case, the people doing the research have a right to be dumb about the topic because, after all, if they weren't dumb, they wouldn't be researching it: right? On the other hand people who claim to be giving them the information they need certainly need to be well-versed in their topic. Sadly, when someone asked Lynn Rademacher "How do I Change the Glass in a Cole Sewell Screen Door?" that poor person didn't get a good answer at HomeSteady.com.

For starters, Rademacher's list of "Things You'll Need" begins with "43 mm Hex nut driver." No kidding! For those of you who are metrically challenged, that's a little smaller than 1¾ inches, a ridiculously large size for a nut driver. Heck it's pretty large for a socket! When we saw that. we knew Lynn had pulled this information out of her hiney.
Then again, we already figured that, since Rademacher never bothered to (gently) inform the OQ that since screen doors don't have glass, they must be talking about a storm door. But no, Lynn just sailed ahead with,

"A screen door lets in fresh air and sunshine on nice days, while the glass in a storm door keeps the cold out. "

Idjit: you either have a door with glass and screen that have to be swapped or a storm door with self-storing glass; you don't have both. Whatever... Rademacher attempted to explain how this whole glass replacement was supposed to be carried out, but since she couldn't find a real reference, she just slapped some local handyman's name in her "reference list" and let it go at that. Funny, that's what she did the other time we nominated her for a DotD...

We'd like to believe that Lynn's directions are valid, but something about them is suspicious. After you use the aforementioned 43mm nut driver to remove some nuts, Rademacher seems to think that you pull off some trim and then you must,

"Lift the glass out of the track..."

When that's finished, Rademacher says to,

"Position the new glass in the track..."

We suspect that's utter bull. We found an image of a Cole-Sewell storm door online (see above), including one of those nuts (they look a lot more like ³⁄₈" than 43mm), and it sure looks as through, like most storm doors, the glass and a screen come in identical metal frames that fit into the track Lynn mentions. That's now every storm door of that design anyone here has worked with functioned.

All of that means that Rademacher's "help" is not very helpful. We were not, however, surprised to find that this information came from the keyboard of another Dumbass of the Day.

¹ Think about it: 50% of people are above-average, 50% are below: simple statistics...

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