After our shakedown trip from South Carolina, we realized we needed to make some mods to our RV screen door, possibly the most used piece of equipment on our camper. It turns out we were spoiled with the screen door on our old camper which had a device that allowed you to depress the screen door handle without moving the slider. I purchased one of these without measuring first, thinking these might all be a standard size. As it turns out it was too small, so I had to find out an alternative means to open the door from the inside. First I tried using a small piece of shade cord which worked fine except it was a little too low. I later found a product from Camco RV called the screen door opener in which you drill a 9/16″ hole in the slider and can depress the screen door handle by lifting up on the Camco handle. You can see a pic of this below on the lower right.
We also discovered that the children have a knack for leaving the screen door open when entering or exiting the camper. This lets the mosquitos in and the dog out. The Screen Door Closer kit also from Camco solves that problem. I had installed a common spring from a hardware store on our old camper but Camco’s kit adds a second spring and hardware for probably not much more. Kudos to Camco for coming up with this and packaging it. The kit works great with the installation of just four screws.
I aslo installed a screen door grille by Camco which I had removed from our old screen door. On that camper it was for the kids, on this one it’s for our dog. Also a four screw installation, very easy. It adjustable so it should fit every type of screen door.
Our last screen door mod wasn’t purchased. I noticed that every time the kids needed to enter the RV from the outside they had to climb up both steps to reach the screen door handle, then back down the same two steps in order to have room to open the outward opening door. Now while holding the door, they now have to climb up the steps again to enter. It’s no wonder they’re leaving the screen door open constantly! I drilled a tiny hole in the screen door handle and threaded the end of a piece of shade cord (different piece than the one I mentioned above) through it, tying a knot at the very end. The other end was lead down the outside of the door through a loop terminating near the bottom of the screen door which can be reached with by the children standing at ground level outside the camper. Now they just have to walk up, pull the cord, opening the door, and simply climb the steps once. Sure, they could use the exercise but the previous process of climbing the stairs multiple times has surely led to more bugs entering the camper. You can check out this install as well as the screen door guard and the opener and closer kits mentioned above in the video below.
I also installed small eye loops and bungee cords at the end of this video as we had stuff launching themselves at us from our medicine and hall pantry cabinets very time we came to a stop after driving. I had the hardware left over from another project and ordered the smallest size bungee cords to string between them creating fiddles that will keep these things from falling out in the future. Thanks for stopping by.
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