Install pet door in wall or in an actual door?

[Moirae]

So we just bought a new house. I'd like to put the litter box in the garage since we will just be using the garage for storage and laundry and not the car (we have two spots outside and its a safe neighborhood).

What do you think? Is it better in the wall or in the door to the garage?

[NecessaryCatharsis]

(All my building knowledge is from canada, your country may have different rules and practices)

If i was doing it I'd put it in the wall. It's cheaper to patch a wall than replace a door if I decided I didn't want it any more. If you're ever selling a buyer would probably think it's easier to replace a door though.

The bigger thing to worry about putting an opening into the garage is if you ever need a building permit in the future you may not get your occupancy cert with an opening into the garage. The wall/door between the house and garage has to be gas proof, to protect house occupants from co poisoning in case someone decides to run the car whatever in the garage without ventilation. That means things like totally sealed drywall, with two layers of mud and tape, exterior grade self closing door, and air sealing around the door opening. It would be hard to be compliant with a pet door, which by its nature, wouldn't be self sealing and gas proof.

(Nb if it was my house I'd do it anyways, knowing that I couldn't run machines in the closed garage, and knowing that I would have to return the wall before I move out)

[Moirae]

Thank you.

We don't need to worry about gas unless you mean gas from the car. The whole house is electrical. Which admittedly could be a problem and we need to get a generator at some point because if the power goes out we could be in trouble.

I live in Louisiana. This house is in a no flood zone and it didn't even flood during Katrina.

You make a good point though. We don't plan on staying here for 30 years (the length of our mortgage) so it might be better to put it in the door.

[NecessaryCatharsis]

Yes, the gas-proofing is required because of gas (carbon monoxide emissions) from the car. Or a boat motor, or a snowmobile or a barbecue or whatever other stupid things people do in the garage. The thought is if your working on a car in the garage and start to feel light headed and headachy you'll be smart enough to go outside for fresh air, but if you're asleep in the house and don't know there is a car running in the garage you could die of co poisoning before you ever wake up.

[Sapphire Silk]

I put my cat door in the door. It was easier, even though it was a metal door.

With a wall, you have to make two cuts into the dry wall and seal off the space between so the cat does not get stuck between the walls. With a door you do not, and you can use a flap door you can get at a pet store. Mine has a magnet latch that keeps it closed; a bit of caulk sealed it up.

I won't have to bother to fix anything when I sell the house. I wouldn't bother to fix or replace the door. I really doubt it would be that much of a negative in selling.

[Ironclad Alibi]

Consider installing a hi-tech entry device for your cat. The details may be found in the "Photon Push-Pull Radiation Detector For Use in Chromatically Selective Cat Flap Control And 1000 Megaton Earth-Orbital Peace-Keeping Bomb". Although it is technical and long, it gets very interesting on page 4 line 115.

Of equal interest is the same inventor's patent for "Exploding Bombs to Create Underground Shelters".

[sms001]

I agree, the door is much easier. Plus, if you put up shelving/rearrange, you won't have to concern yourself with building around a hole in the wall or moving the cat door.

Consider installing a hi-tech entry device for your cat.

I fear Mr. Pedrick may have left his foil beanie off just a tad too long.

Too funny.

[protege]

When I brought Kitty home from the farm, after he got used to his new home...I had to put in a kitty door. I run a dehumidifier downstairs, and have to keep the door closed in spring and summer.

Problem is, one of his litter boxes was downstairs. The dehumidifier would run all day long as needed. I couldn't keep the door closed, since Kitty needed his bathroom, his food bowl, and liked to hide downstairs if it was hot. The answer was to install a door for him. Not very hard, actually. The door I used came from the pet store. It's actually a bit oversized, since it's really meant for a dog. But, with a large, very fluffy Maine Coon, it works well.

Taking the door off the hinges was the hard part. I took it outside, put it on the sawhorses, and got to work. The door kit includes a cutting template and all the screws you need. At this point, I chose to deviate from the instructions. They said I should use a knife. Even with a hollow-core door, it was easier to use the jigsaw. Drill out one of the corners, put a long blade into the saw, and had the opening in a few minutes.

To me, cutting a hole in the door was much easier than messing about with plaster walls. A door can easily be replaced, or the hole fitted with the 'blanking' plates the kit includes. Not so with a wall. Cutting a hole in a plaster wall makes a huge mess. Plus, there are other things to consider--what about wires and pipes? Then, once you've made the hole, you have to "box it in" to keep kitty out of the now-exposed walls.

[Moirae]

I live in a VERY humid southern environment. A dehumidifier sounds like a great idea. Especially given the problem with fleas there is here.

I think I'll take everyones advice and just install it in the door. It would make things much easier, I think.

[wolfie]

The whole house is electrical. Which admittedly could be a problem and we need to get a generator at some point because if the power goes out we could be in trouble.

Couple points:

- Don't run the generator in the garage. Unlike a car (which is still dangerous), generators don't have catalytic converters to cut down on the amount of carbon monoxide in the exhaust.

- Either get yourself a lot of heavy-duty extension cords to run from the generator to whatever plug-in loads you need to power, or get a transfer switch with the generator feed being from the "can pull ALL the power from this outlet" connection. If you need to power hardwired items from the generator, a transfer switch is the ONLY option. NEVER feed power from a generator into the house's wiring without a transfer switch - you'll wind up back-feeding the utility grid and could fry a lineman working on a "dead" line.

- Consider getting a small shed for the generator, and mounting it there, rather than running it as a portable. You can have a hardwired connection to your transfer switch (if run as a portable, you'd need a "death cord" to feed the transfer switch), and a noise with no visible source is less likely to be a theft target in a power outage than a generator sitting out in the open.

- If possible, get an 1800 RPM (4 pole) generator rather than a 3600 RPM (2 pole) unit. They're more expensive, but more durable and quieter.

- Make a regular schedule (once a month, or once every 2 months) to start the generator, let it warm up to operating temperature, then shut it down and change the oil. A generator that's left sitting for an extended period might not want to start when you need it.

- I'm assuming you'll be using a gasoline (rather than diesel) generator (of course, if you own a diesel vehicle, you can follow the same program with a diesel generator). You'll need to keep a good supply of fuel for the generator, but stored fuel tends to go stale. Rotate your fuel supply - on a regular schedule (do you burn more than 5 gallons/week? If so, keep your fuel in 5 gallon jerrycans and do this for one can per week), pour your oldest fuel into your car's tank, then go get fresh fuel for the generator. You'll need at least 2 jerrycans - otherwise, Murphy's Law dictates that the power will go out after you've poured the fuel into your car but before you can get to the gas station, so you'll have NO fuel for your generator. With 4 jerrycans, your fuel won't get older than a month, and you'll still have 15 gallons in a worst-case scenario.

- Consider modifying the fuel system to feed from an outboard motor fuel tank instead of the built-in tank. In an extended outage, you'll run the tank dry, and it's dangerous to re-fuel the tank on a hot engine (in case of spill) so you'd need to let it cool down (meanwhile you have no electricity) before refueling. Outboard tanks have a bayonet-type connector so you can switch tanks (and take the now-empty tank away from the generator to fill it), or at the very least the refueling will take place a couple feet away from the hot engine (i.e. fuel spill won't be on something hot enough to ignite it).

- Use fuel stabilizer in the generator's tank. If you go the outboard tank route, that's not necessary (so long as the outboard tank is in the rotation pattern and doesn't get stored for an extended period) - at the end of your monthly/semimonthly test run, shut down the generator by unplugging the bayonet connector and let the generator suck the line dry (i.e. no fuel stored in the generator).

[BearLeeBadenaugh]

Great post re: generators wolfie. The outboard motor tank idea is a great one, I'll have to do that for my portable genny. Another advantage by doing this is that they do make Y connectors, so you can have 2 tanks feeding the same engine and swap a tank out without having to shut it down.

I wholeheartedly agree in regards to the 4-pole vs 2-pole. I've used quite a few gennys for site power in construction, and 3600 rpm units are pretty much one season and dead under a normal work weeks power load. In this vein, you should also take into account duty cycle. Many of the smaller units aren't designed to be running 24/7 for a week or two, let alone months.


If you're looking at an installed genny, I'm a big fan of multi-fuel units designed to run on both gasoline and propane/natural gas. Depending on the model, they may be self adjusting or you may need to change out some small parts when switching between fuels. Of course, with the whole house already being electric, there's not that easy choice of "well, we've already got the propane tank in the back" Another advantage of propane/natural gas units is that their fuel takes much longer to go bad(decades, not months, IIRC)