Which Screening Material is Right For Your Home

 

Since the weather warms up everybody is more than prepared to throw open their windows and doors and get some much needed air. Unfortunately, with fresh atmosphere come bugs.

 

Besides drenching your yard in chemicals or citronella candles that the ideal way to keep the bugs away while enjoying clean air in your home is to incorporate screens and screen doors.

I have posted a tutorial about ways to construct your personal DIY window screens  and you can see that video below. It is a great money saver along with the displays look professional, but one thing that I did not cover was how to select the ideal screening for your own project.

 

There are decorative options like aluminum or bronze screening, utilitarian options like pet screening to keep cats and dogs at bay, and good old fashioned fiberglass screening. In this post, I'll help you through the choices and when you might use one over the other as well as the costs of each.

 

Decide on the Ideal Screening

The pricing and functions of all of the different kinds of screen mesh change wildly so understanding exactly what you want your screen to accomplish is key to picking the proper screening.

 

These screens will block insects without a problem. We'll start at the most basic level and work from there to find the ideal screening for your project.

 

Fiberglass screening is everywhere and is extremely cheap running roughly $0.25 each SF. Most of it is coated in vinyl to durability and flexibility and this is by far the most typical and most cost effective screening in the marketplace nowadays.

 

Fiberglass screening is flexible enough that if you bump into it can stretch and come right back with sagging or denting like some of the metallic screening we will talk about below. This makes it a fantastic choice if you have little kids who are"handsy" or you're on a budget.

 

The next step up in quality would be aluminum screening which is a fantastic replacement for historical displays which were usually made from galvanized steel. Aluminum is a more demanding screening material than fiberglass, although being a thin metal it does dent readily when banged or bumped.

 

Aluminum comes in many different colors with options for vivid, charcoal, and black. The brighter colors can produce a very different appearance, but for greatest visibility proceed with the black or charcoal choices.

 

The Mac-daddy of high end screening is bronze screening. It's tougher than aluminum which means it's a little more resilient to harm but also more difficult to work with and reduce.

 

When recently installed it's a beautiful gold color that really glistens in the sun. That color gradually fades to a deep copper color over the first couple years and then after a couple of decades you you might get a hint of green patina because bronze ages the exact same manner copper does.

 

You will pay a premium for bronze screening at $2.65 per SF that's 10x the cost of ceramic, but if you want that high end look then that is what it takes.

 

For those of us with fur babies, pet screening is a good idea especially for screen doors. Pet screening is a reinforced fiberglass screening that is roughly 20% more powerful than normal fiberglass screening.

 

The more rigorous screening can stand up to small and medium dogs and cats (as long as they do not utilize it as a scratching post) sticking their noses and paws where they necessarily will go.

 

The visibility is a little less than regular fiberglass screening but still quite great. At around $0.96 a SF it is a substantial update, but well worth it to prevent constantly replacing screening due to irascible pets.

 

For all those of you at the southern states you may choose to look into solar screening for the south and west sides of you house. This tighter weave of screening cubes upwards of 90% of the sun's warmth from passing through it.

 

This is a superb alternative for energy savings since the upcharge is relatively small at $0.75 per SF. In addition to window displays, another great spot to put in this is atop pergolas to make the sitting room considerably cooler and give you less likelihood of sunburn.

 

Mostly available in black there are a variety of options offering various degrees of heat blocking ranging between 40% and 90%.

 

Don't be fooled that regular screens do not also block warmth and sun penetration, they are simply not rated or designed for this exceptional purpose in your mind. You'll definitely get some warmth blocking benefits by adding any kind of screening to your old windows.

 

MicroMesh Screening

This goes with a great deal of different titles, but MicroMesh screening is a smaller weave screening that is a 20×20 mesh rather than the normal 10×14 mesh. It is fantastic for people who want to eliminate even the smallest bugs like gnats and “no-see-ums" which is just another nickname with this screening.

 

It is made from ceramic and has great visibility through it compared to conventional fiberglass screening. It runs about $0.56 per SF.

 

We're not speaking bright and shiny like your own kitchen sink, but a uniform black substance that blends in with everybody else's screens, but provides premium performance particularly for tough environments such as coastal climates or higher traffic areas.