Security screens, stage by stage: what actually happens on the day.

Most people have never had screens fitted before and the questions are always the same: how long will you be here, do I need to take the day off, what about the dog, and what does the place look like when you leave. Here is the honest version, stage by stage, with the things that stall a job called out where they happen.

Prepare-for-the-crew checklist

Ten minutes the night before saves half an hour of labour on the day. Tick these off, print it, or leave it on the kitchen bench for whoever is home.

Access, parking, power and water

Parking is the single thing that most often costs time. A hinged door panel is about 2 metres tall and awkward rather than heavy, and a sliding door panel is worse. Carrying one 60 metres from a parked van, past a neighbour’s car and through a side gate, adds up across a whole house. A driveway space or a kerbside spot outside the front door is worth more to the job than anything else you can do. The older pockets of Corrimal, Fairy Meadow and Gwynneville have narrow streets and a lot of on-street parking, and the CBD unit blocks often have no visitor bay at all, so mention it at the measure and we plan around it.

Power is nice but not critical. Most fabrication happens off site, so the day is mostly cordless drills, a vacuum and occasionally a drop saw for a trim cut. One standard 10 amp outlet, inside or out, covers everything. We do not need water, although an outside tap is handy for washing hands and rinsing masonry dust off a path. Nobody needs to disconnect anything, and there is no need to be off the internet or off the power at any point.

Noise, dust and smell

Noise comes in bursts, not a steady roar. Every fixing into a brick or rendered reveal is a 10 to 30 second run of the hammer drill, and a hinged door needs 8 to 14 of them. Between openings it is quiet talk and hand tools. In practice a whole house is maybe 15 to 20 minutes of genuinely loud work spread over five hours. New South Wales noise regulations restrict power tools at residential premises to daytime hours, generally not before 7:00am and not after 8:00pm on weekdays and Saturdays, and not before 8:00am on Sundays and public holidays. We do not start drilling before 7:30am out of courtesy to your neighbours regardless.

Dust is fine masonry powder at each fixing point and metal swarf where anything is trimmed. Both are managed with a drop sheet under the opening and a vacuum before we move on. The one to watch is swarf walked into a light carpet or a timber deck, which is why we magnet sweep at the end. Smell is silicone: most exterior sealants cure by releasing acetic acid, so the house smells faintly of vinegar for a few hours. Leave a window open and it is gone by evening.

Pets, kids and working from home

Every door we work on stands wide open for the duration. Cats get out, and a dog that would never normally leave the yard will follow a stranger to the van. Put them in a closed room, in the car with someone, or at a neighbour’s for the morning. If the dog is anxious around power tools, tell us and we will do that side of the house last.

Children need to be out of the work zone rather than out of the house. Cut mesh edges, offcuts of aluminium and dropped screws are the hazards, and none of them look dangerous to a five year old. Working from home is completely workable: give the installer your call times when they arrive and they will schedule the drilling around them. A whole house is only a handful of genuinely loud windows.

Weather, and what actually stops a job

Wollongong weather stops fewer jobs than people expect, because most openings on most local houses sit under an eave or a verandah. Light rain is not a problem there. What does stop us is persistent rain, because exterior sealant will not cure properly against wet masonry and the reveal has to be dry when the frame goes in. An east coast low, the sort that parks over the Illawarra for two or three days, is a reschedule. So is a strong wind: a 2 metre panel is a sail, and handling one on an exposed site in a hard north-easter or a winter westerly funnelling down off the escarpment through Figtree and Mount Ousley is not safe.

A reschedule costs you nothing and we normally slot you back in within a week. The other delay worth knowing about is upstream: if a mesh colour or a hardware item is on back order, that shows up during manufacture, not on the day, and you will hear about it before your fitting date rather than after.

What a clean site looks like, and where the waste goes

When we leave, every drop sheet is up, the swarf is vacuumed and magnet swept, the masonry dust is off the sill and the path, the packaging is in the van, and the old doors and screens are gone unless you asked to keep them. Nothing should be leaning against the fence and there should be no screws in the lawn. If a light-coloured path has picked up a smear of drilling dust, it hoses off.

Old aluminium frames and stainless mesh are scrap metal with real value, so they go to a metal recycler rather than to landfill. Fibreglass insect mesh, rubber spline, old rollers and packaging foam are not recyclable and go to general waste. If you are clearing out old screens yourself before we come, Wollongong City Council’s waste and resource recovery facility at Whytes Gully in Kembla Grange takes household metal and general waste, and scrap yards around Unanderra and Port Kembla will take clean aluminium.

The honest part: when the day does not go to plan

Three things stall a job, and all three are avoidable. First, an out-of-square reveal in an older house. Weatherboard and fibro homes around Corrimal and Coniston can be 8 to 10 mm out over a door height, which we pack and scribe on the day, but it adds 20 to 30 minutes per opening. Second, a rotten or split timber jamb that only shows itself when the old door comes off. We will not screw a security frame into soft timber, so that opening gets deferred until the jamb is repaired, and we will tell you what it needs. Third, someone changing their mind about handing or colour on the day. Made-to-measure screens cannot be flipped, so that is a re-order and a second visit.

We would rather leave one opening undone and come back than fit a screen into something that will not hold it. If you would rather handle the install yourself, the DIY versus professional page sets out exactly what that involves, and how to choose a door covers what to settle before the order goes in.