We did a job yesterday on a nice home only 2 years old. We thought it would be an easy job. The screens were impossible. When you compressed the springs from the exterior you could see that the screen was literally larger than the opening. I have seen this with Milgard Windows before, but not the whole house. I was able to remove 8 of them, barely was able to put 6 of them back on and 2 would only break/bend if I continued to try and put them in correctly. We had 6 where we had to flip the 150 lb sliders to clean and 4 single hung windows that I had to pull the spline out on 3 sides of the screen, clean the window and then re-spline in the screen mesh.
That sucks.
For newbies:
There is a specific screen design that if the builder/homeowner put the thing in backwards, it’s impossible to get out.
If you can see the spring, then it’s in backwards and you could use a paint can opener tool (a tool of 1,000 uses) to compress the spring and pull them out.
If you can’t see the spring and the screen won’t budge, don’t force it. The screen will bend a little bit but with too much pressure you will damage the frame. There’s no warning before you do damage. One second you’re good, next second bam.
Bump
[MENTION=7295]Jason Leman[/MENTION], is that you? He just posted this question a couple days ago… See my reply there
Randy, the sliding pane on the Milgard single hung window comes out pretty easy. Would be a much better option than pulling spline.
What a kick in the balls. We all get jobs like this on occasion an we certainly do learn from them… but the reasoning behind the design is absolutely baffling
Read my post again. A little slower this time.
I did. It still seems like you said you had to take the spline out of 4 screens on single hung windows to clean the sash because the screen wouldn’t come off. Im not here to argue but a lot of people dont realize that the moving sash on milgard single hung’s come out. I remove them a lot on 3 story windows, easier to clean from inside.
I’m not sure what type of windows that you are talking about, but i wonder if they are at all like the screens on a lot of windows here.
From the outside the screens appear far to big to be able to be removed, however once inside you remove the sliding window and the screen then just lifts out. Which is why half the time and clean the outside of the slider that i have taken out the re install it and clean the inside.
It sounds like they need to be removed from the inside not the out side. We come into contact with these occasionally. You need to slide the window over all the way if they still are to big wich is the case many. Times you need to pop the window out and pull the screen. This is for windows that slide side to side
