Different kind of shed door

[jim_hanna]

I'm looking for design ideas for a different kind of shed door.

I’m going to have to make a new one. The current door has been destroyed by the occupants thundering in and out at high speed. What really annoys me is that this is the second door they’ve destroyed. When the first one was wrecked I bought aluminium strip and epoxied it (the brown gunk on the door in the pic below) to the replacement as reinforcement. It extended the life of the door by a few months.

The culprits

At £ 35 per kit this is getting expensive. I could make something with a ply door slotted into a dowel rod but the occupants have another form of anti-social behaviour, they chew wood. The commercial pet door kits actually come with two doors, the stiff plastic one which shatters and a softer flexible plastic one which was chewed to pieces a couple of days later.

Has anyone got a better design of dog door or could suggest a material which would be more durable? Unfortunately it has to be light as well, they’re only small dogs.

 

[custard]

I'll follow this thread with interest. I've got a similar problem...caused by two chihuahuas!

 

[marcros]

what about polycarbonate- the solid rather than the twinwall.

 

[cedarwood]

A piece of string tie one end to a front leg the other to a back leg that will stop them running and jumping, it stops our sheep from persistently getting out of the field

 

[Alex H]

Stainless Steel? :-"

 

[jim_hanna]

A piece of string tie one end to a front leg the other to a back leg that will stop them running and jumping, it stops our sheep from persistently getting out of the field

Sometimes I do feel like stringing them up (not just for the door - the barking, chewing, urination on inappropriate legs and the digging that goes on in the flowerbeds is another story) but generally they're good company .

Thanks for all the suggestions. Polycarb or stainless steel would do the job but sourcing small sheets of these at a reasonable price in Northern Ireland would be difficult and I don’t have any skills or experience in cutting or working metal sheets.

I might approach the problem from a different angle. I could just accept that any door will have a finite life and make the frame such that a replacement can be quickly dropped in without having to disassemble the whole thing.

Jim

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

Instead of gluing the doors....glue the dogs

 

[marcros]

A piece of string tie one end to a front leg the other to a back leg that will stop them running and jumping, it stops our sheep from persistently getting out of the field

Sometimes I do feel like stringing them up (not just for the door - the barking, chewing, urination on inappropriate legs and the digging that goes on in the flowerbeds is another story) but generally they're good company .

Thanks for all the suggestions. Polycarb or stainless steel would do the job but sourcing small sheets of these at a reasonable price in Northern Ireland would be difficult and I don’t have any skills or experience in cutting or working metal sheets.

I might approach the problem from a different angle. I could just accept that any door will have a finite life and make the frame such that a replacement can be quickly dropped in without having to disassemble the whole thing.

Jim

ebay. as long as you get the supplier to send via royal mail, it shouldnt be rediculously expensive- well no more so than Royal Mail is these days.

 

[beech1948]

Basically you could choose to buy a solid length of plastic and machine it like wood. Light, strong, chew resistant.
Al

 

[ColeyS1]

Can't you get a anti chew scent that you spray on things ? I saw an idea for a big wooden dog flap a while ago, but if it's wood........

Sent from my GT-I9300

 

[Woodchips2]

Build a kennel and keep them outdoors. I'm a dog lover and all our dogs lived outdoors ready to meet and greet unwelcome visitors (hammer)

A vet once told me that dogs are built to live outdoors and getting hot in a centrally heated house doesn't do them any good.

Regards Keith

 

[No skills]

As long as the hinge is in good condition can you not just make some sacrificial doors to attach to it?

http://www.theplasticshop.co.uk/clear-p ... 674-0.html

Don't know how much the postage is but they say they use royal mail.

 

[pip1954]

hi check out ebay for small sheets of stainless steel it would not be very big should not be to pricey
pip

 

[jim_hanna]

Thanks everyone for all the suggestions.

Can't you get a anti chew scent that you spray on things ? I saw an idea for a big wooden dog flap a while ago, but if it's wood........

We tried a number of anti-chew products when they were pups. The sprays all seem to use the same lemony citronella ingredient. They would keep the bigger dog away from it but the little bitch licked the anti-chew spray from my hand, she seemed to like the citronella taste.

As long as the hinge is in good condition can you not just make some sacrificial doors to attach to it?

The hinge on the commercial kit is just a couple of plastic lugs, it wouldn’t survive for long.


I’ve decided to knock up a quick doggy door from off-cuts. If this survives for any length of time then there’s probably no need to source stronger materials. I roughed out the parts for the frame and door in about 40 minutes so making a new door wouldn’t be a major job and it would just drop into the slots.

My original idea was to use a 6mm ply off-cut for the door, I upped this to 9mm ply after watching one of them launch himself into a bush today when his ball landed in it. 10kg of muscle at speed made quite an impression on the bush.
The side parts in which the dowel will swivel are made of oak and the dowel is beech I think. The weakest points will be where the ply tenons go into the dowel, the whole door might shear off there but I’ll see how it goes.

 

[No skills]

Let us know how it holds up.

 

[rafezetter]

As long as the hinge is in good condition can you not just make some sacrificial doors to attach to it?

http://www.theplasticshop.co.uk/clear-p ... 674-0.html

Don't know how much the postage is but they say they use royal mail.

I was considering the same thing - but make it out of possible a combination of wood and sheet steel:

A thin steel core with 2 bits of thin ply or cheap Ikea cutting boards (80p each I think) for chewability on either side, probably bolted - not ideal, but hopefully it'll only take a few times before they learn that chewing metal isn't good.

if you got 2 bits of small half round architrave and glued, bolted them either side at the "top" of the sheet of metal, that might suffice as the swing part - you might have to whittle down to make the pins, or make the attachment hole large enough to take the architrave size.

if you are not so happy about using bolts to attach the sacrificial parts as well as good epoxy (which might not be man enough to withstand the dogs as from that pic it looks as though the glue failed), drill a series of holes and take some softer copper wire - like speaker wire - and "stitch" through all 3 sides (after removing the outer plastic maybe to be safe) with a bit of glue like thin superglue to help it along - I'd also do this away from the biteable edge to reduce the chance they damage it.

Once it came time to replace, doing so would be a simple matter and relatively cheap.