Sagefemme
Senior Member
Last weekend we arrived at Summer Lake, Oregon at about 9 pm. There were lots of mosquitoes. We got set up quickly and retreated inside to escape the bugs. As always, a few mosquitoes came into the camper with us but were easy to kill. And kill, and kill, and kill some more. At some point it became clear that new ones were getting in somehow. We had the screen door closed and the main door open.
In the dark I couldn't see where they were coming in. When we closed the main door they stopped entering. Next morning in the light I realized the screen door was not sitting tight against the doorway, in fact the gap at the upper corner opposite the hinge was huge! But there was some gap all the way across the top almost to the hinge, and all the way down the free side to the floor. The door does not look obviously bent.
Today I partially fixed the problem by moving the latch closer to the door frame. Now the majority of the gap is gone except at the upper corner. There is a thin piece of fuzzy weatherstripping around the door frame. I am tempted to get some beefier weather stripping or felt and just glue it to the frame to fill this gap. Has anyone had this issue? How did you fix it? Is this a sensible approach?
While I was looking at all this I decided to address another problem which is when you're inside the camper you can't get the red lever that controls the deadbolt to turn as far as it would need to to be functional. In other words, you flip the lever but you can still open the door. The tongue is not in the opening in the door. I realized that the latch is very misplaced--needs to move down at least 1/4 inch for the deadbolt not to strike it. I will have to enlarge the opening at the bottom. How best to cut the aluminum so I can move the latch down? You can see it's already been moved down once. PS the gap at the top of the door is much smaller now that I have moved the latch, but it's still big enough to let mosquitoes in.
In the dark I couldn't see where they were coming in. When we closed the main door they stopped entering. Next morning in the light I realized the screen door was not sitting tight against the doorway, in fact the gap at the upper corner opposite the hinge was huge! But there was some gap all the way across the top almost to the hinge, and all the way down the free side to the floor. The door does not look obviously bent.
Today I partially fixed the problem by moving the latch closer to the door frame. Now the majority of the gap is gone except at the upper corner. There is a thin piece of fuzzy weatherstripping around the door frame. I am tempted to get some beefier weather stripping or felt and just glue it to the frame to fill this gap. Has anyone had this issue? How did you fix it? Is this a sensible approach?
While I was looking at all this I decided to address another problem which is when you're inside the camper you can't get the red lever that controls the deadbolt to turn as far as it would need to to be functional. In other words, you flip the lever but you can still open the door. The tongue is not in the opening in the door. I realized that the latch is very misplaced--needs to move down at least 1/4 inch for the deadbolt not to strike it. I will have to enlarge the opening at the bottom. How best to cut the aluminum so I can move the latch down? You can see it's already been moved down once. PS the gap at the top of the door is much smaller now that I have moved the latch, but it's still big enough to let mosquitoes in.
