Getting the Right Materials for a Patio or Porch

Landscaping your yard offers a verdant, green jewel outside your patio doors, but upgrading your patio entryway can boost the curb appeal even further. It makes sense to renovate the entry into your newly planted oasis of suburbia with a modern patio door. New door designs update the look of the door and its energy efficiency.

The most energy efficient sliding glass doors carry an Energy Star rating. They feature double- or triple-pane glass with low-conductivity gases between the panes and a low-emissivity coating on the exterior. Choosing a design like this provides a beautiful view of your landscape through oversized glass sliding doors and helps reduce your energy costs.

On the exterior of the home, edge the patio doors with sidelights. This process creates a lovely view of your home from the yard, which doubles your beautification. It also adds to the ambient lighting on your patio or deck, making it a more welcoming environment. Unlike your interior, most patios don’t need task lighting, but they do need ambient lighting, and the yard needs accent lighting.

Landscaping is the act of adding accessories and features to the front and back yards of a home, and it can result in many things, from a flowerbed or shrubs and fruit trees all the way to a private pool, a wooden deck, or a patio, and landscaping can often offer a great return of investment, or ROI when a homeowner is ready to sell their property. However, some of these landscaping features will need protection so that they can continue to be desirable and useful, and in the case of a patio, porch, or deck, this may mean adding a bug screen, windows to a fiberglass patio, a pool cage screen, or more to block unwanted insects such as mosquitoes, flies, and wasps, and such screens can be used to keep out unwanted human activity, too. Some patios, decks or enclosed sunrooms will have valuable items on them such as chairs and tables, grills, or even a full outdoor kitchen, and to prevent thieves from spotting these items to steal, a homeowner may invest in a privacy window screen mesh to keep strangers’ eyes away. A privacy window screen mesh can also be set up on the home’s own windows, especially where expensive items such as large flat-screen TVs or gaming consoles are in plain sight, and a privacy window screen mesh can set a homeowner’s mind at ease, knowing that no nosy neighbors or robbers are looking into the home.

Protect the Patio

A good patio or deck is meant to be a fun place where friends and family can be together outdoors for fresh air, nature, and grilling dinner and eating together at a table, but this can be ruined in spring and summer when uninvited insect guests show up. At best, these insects are irritating and unsanitary, such as flies landing on food or in drinks, or they can be a substantial health hazard, such as stinging hornets or wasps. And in some regions of the United States, mosquitoes are not just bothersome, but they are also the carriers of dangerous diseases. Female mosquitoes will land on a person’s skin and draw up blood, and in the meantime, they transmit diseases that they carry, such as the infamous malaria. These diseases are only spread by the insects’ bites, however, so keeping them at a distance with a bug screen for patio features or a screen mesh will render them harmless. Anyone living in an area that gets mosquitoes will want to set up such a mesh to prevent someone from getting ill.

Porch netting or screen mesh can be rolled up and put away when not needed, such as in winter, and it can be deployed and set up in times of the year when mosquitoes can be expected to arrive in great numbers to an outdoor gathering. Some models of screen mesh can be conveniently unrolled and hung up, and anyone who sets them up will have to check them every so often for any holes or other damage, and any hole big enough for an insect to get through should be fixed right away. The mesh should also be tightly sealed at the top, bottom, and sides so that mosquitoes and flies do not have ingress. If a net is in good shape and set up just right, then mosquitoes, flies, and wasps will easily be kept away and a group can enjoy the outdoors in peace.

Privacy window screen mesh is more useful to keep away troublesome people. Such screens can be bought at a hardware store and set up on an enclosed patio’s or sunroom’s windows and glass walls to prevent strangers from seeing everything inside, such as valuable furniture or cooking equipment. The rest of the house can use these meshes as well, as explained above, and serve a similar purpose to window blinds and drapes. A homeowner should note, however, that window treatments like blinds or automatic screens may double as ways to prevent warm or cool air from leaking out of the home and preventing hot sunlight from warming a home too fast. A security mesh or blinds may be desired based on the homeowner’s needs.