I’ve written a general 101 guide which has some basic info about glass sliding doors, click here
For a more in-depth break down of the process, please read on…
When measuring, we focus on the following specifics

- Glass thickness and type, generally glass sliding doors are 5mm, occasionally 4mm for new doors and now and then 6.38 laminated.
- Dog door flap size. I’ve written a good summary of flap sizes here
- Clearance between the dog door and adjacent doors or screens. A good trick is to check if a AA battery fits through the sliding door and any adjacent door, screens, or fixed panels. etc. Because a AA battery is slightly larger than the dog door flap, if you can fit a AA battery then the dog door won’t hit anything when sliding past.
- Height of the dog door flap for your pet’s convenience.
- Ordering.
Installation

When installation day comes around, remember we’ve done hundreds of sliding door repairs. Installing a dog door is no different than a general sliding door repair, literally, other than fitting the flap (which is a tiny nuance). Sliding doors are often straightforward, though, even the best glaziers can get stuck on a sliding door, so every now and then the installation process can take longer than usual.
Before making any steps to install a dog door, we must ensure the sliding door slides ok and locks fine. If a glazier replaces the glass on a sliding door this can change many different aspects of the sliding door, although subtle changes when replacing the glass can affect the way your door slides, locks and essentially feels when opening and closing.
When installing the new dog door glass, we almost always do this on the back of the ute. By removing the sliding door or fixed panel, we then take this apart on the ute. By removing the frame from the glass in L sections- meaning we only remove two screws diagonally positioned.
When adding the new piece of glass to your existing aluminium frame we use the same gasket or block and silicon instead, depending on the door and type of glass we chose.

Once the new glass is full installed into the aluminium frame we check for square and insert this back into the track where it came from in your home.
Final step: Installing the dog door flap isn’t rocket science but we do two things to make sure the job is done right, #1 we check the dog door flap is square, and #2 we don’t tighten the screws up too tight. Being plastic you don’t want to tighten the screws too tight so the plastic cracks soon after.