Carlson Pro Pets Wall Mount Royal Pet Door, Large

I bought a house that had a dog door installed. It was a Ruff Weather door and the flaps were all broken. I didn't have a dog at the time so I just stuffed insulation in the opening and closed the inside/outside panels. Now I have a Labrador puppy and I'd like the dog door to work. I looked at buying new flaps for the Ruff Weather but it seemed pointless because they would inevitably break. The door was also poorly installed and I like to do things once and do them right.I debated between a number of dog doors before I bought this one. It's main competitor is Plexidor which has a highly rated dog door with the same bi-fold design. I was going to buy the Plexidor model but I read numerous people had issues cutting the metal and forming the tunnel (part inbetween the wall). It basically looked like you got some aluminum flashing and had to make your own tunnel.The Carlson door has a slide together tunnel. The inside portion and the outside portion slide inside of each other and it adjusts to fit most walls. My exterior wall is 2x6 with slate tiles on the outside and the tunnel just barely overlaps. If you have normal stucco and a 2x6 wall you should be fine. 2x4 wall would also be fine. This self building tunnel was the main reason I bought this door over the Plexidor. It's a very elegant design.Another benefit over the Plexidor is it comes with a stainless steel security panel that has nice thumbscrews that screw into threaded holes in the frame. The Plexidor you have to use screws to attach the security panel which means a screwdriver everytime you want to put it up. Plus, after 10-20 times of putting it on I'm betting the wood you're screwing it into is ruined and wouldn't hold up against a kick.I did consider the more traditional flapped Defender door from Carlson as well. It has an aluminum double wall flap that insulates better. I called them up and talked with a sales lady about it. She said the flap weighed about two pounds. I decided if I had to crawl through a door 10 times a day I wouldn't want a 2lb flap dragging along my back. I'd rather have the bi-fold design. Maybe dogs don't care. Both flap designs seal well enough to keep 99% of the air out.I bought the large size door which is a good size to buy since the width required for the hole is the same as the distance between studs if they are 16" on center (which they are unless you have some weird house). I have a male Labrador puppy and I put the top of the door at 25" which seems to be one inch taller than a good estimate for a fully grown lab. This put the bottom of the door at 7" above the floor.Installation was time consuming. On the website they estimate 45 minutes for install and have a nice video showing an install in a fake wall. If your wall is sheetrock and just plywood on the outside then sure 45 minutes. If you have stucco or vinyl or anything else it will take longer. In my case cutting through the slate tiles was a huge time sink. In your normal exterior wall you have plywood, tar paper, then either stucco/wood/vinyl siding. The normal jigsaw blade will cut either wood or metal or with a carbide blade you can cut concrete/rock. But no blade cuts them all.For the exterior I ended up using a masonry cutoff blade on my 4.5" angle grinder to cut through the slate and the stucco and chicken wire mesh under the stucco. With the stone/concrete removed I was then able to use a wood jigsaw blade to cut through the plywood on the exterior wall. I used the hammer drill and carbide bits to drill the initial holes through the exterior wall for placing the template they include. I also used them to drill out the slate and stucco where the exterior mounting holes are.I didn't use the included template since I already had a dog door I was ripping out. I just used the door itself and measured accordingly. I cut the interior wall first and then when it fit I drilled through the 4 corners on the exterior wall. Due to the hinges and lock mechanism the interior side has cutouts that look like castle ramparts. The exterior side is just a rectangle.The interior wall was easy although I ended up having to re-route an electrical wire which meant I cut out a much larger section of sheetrock than needed and I'm now taping and texturing that section. I recommend a dremel or jigsaw. Something you can control the depth of cut with so you only cut as deep as the sheetrock.I would also plan on re-routing an electrical wire. Most modern house wiring is about 16" off the floor when they run wires through the studs. If you do end up finding a wire you just need to add two outlets. You cut the wire in the middle (make sure the circuit is off first!) and pull it back. Put an outlet box in place and wire up an outlet. Run a new piece of wire 3-4 feet down the run and then pull back the other side of the cut wire and put in another outlet. You now have two new outlets and the section of wire in-between them you can run however you like. You will almost certainly end up cutting out a larger section of sheetrock (I recommend 48" wide so a replacement piece is easy to cut) and re-doing the sheetrock. If moving an electrical wire seems daunting get a studfinder that detects wires and make sure there are no wires where you plan on putting the door.In my opinion you need a jigsaw, hammer drill, carbide drill bits for the hammer drill (3/8" and 1/4"), something to cut your exterior finish with and a full day of your time. You should also buy a can of expanding foam and a tube of 100% silicone caulk (they include a small one but you don't want to run out). If your exterior finish is deeper than just stucco you should buy a 20 pack of 2" stainless steel screws so you have more length to screw into. All the supplies can be found at Home Depot. The kit comes with silicone caulk and stainless steel screws that are 1.5" long. I'm the type of guy that puts 3" screws in his door frame so I like the longer screws. I also used a 3/16" punch to mark the 6 screw holes so I could drill out the slate and concrete on the exterior and leave just wood for the screws to screw into.Once installed, the door looks fabulous. I don't know why anyone cheaps out on a door. You'll spend way more time installing it then anything else. What's a couple hundred bucks so you know you won't ever have to redo it. In addition to looking good the door works great at keeping the air out. The seals are all the way around and replaceable so in 10-15 years you don't have to redo everything.The only downside is the doors are made of Lexan. They are see through and look great until my puppy pawed at the doors to get them to open and now they're all scratched up. It was probably my disappointment at having spent so much time installing this beautiful door only to see it scratched up in the first 5 minutes. It also took my puppy a day to figure out how to use it. The bi-fold design is just different from the cloth flap we had in the Ruff Weather door. He's a 9 week old Lab and the doors are a little hard for him to open. He has to scramble more to overcome the seals. He figured it out though, and he's growing fast. At 11 weeks now he sails through the door with no issues.The door comes with some very nice padded metal devices that prop the door open at an angle so your dog can get used to it. I propped open one panel that way my dog could get used to the feeling of the door on his side as he pushed through. They worked great and he learned fast.If I didn't already have an existing dog door in my wall I would probably go for the door mounted design. It's easier to install and not as permanent since you can buy a new house door pretty easily. On the plus side I have the dog door in a laundry room and I built a little kennel outside so my dog can come and go as he pleases but not have full run of the house while we're gone.In short, I think this is the best door you can get and given how long it will take you to install it along with permanently cutting a hole in your house you really shouldn't buy a cheap door. Use the expanding foam to seal any gaps and then use a generous amount of silicone on the flange before screwing the whole thing down. It should last a very long time.

Install is incredibly time consuming and difficult. I have a background in construction and woodworking, having done everything from pole-barn construction to custom gun cabinets, desks, tables etc. yet it took me nearly 5 hours to install this properly in my shop, and still required a custom built tunnel as the panels for the top and bottom are too short to pass through a wall.Furthermore, after only about 20-30 days of use, one door is broke off and the exposed metal edges caused minor cuts and bleeding to a dogs leg. Fortunately he was not hurt worse. The plexiglass window panels are glued (poorly) to the metal frames that, themselves are not attached to each other at all. So when the dog pushed through to go out, the door broke into pieces.Pictures are of the door after it was broken and pieces are gathered up. I now have a large hole in the side of my insulated/heated shop going into a South Dakota winter.

I would not recommend this. It’s been a month and my dogs still don’t use it unless one of the doors is propped open. We got this one to keep the cold and hot out better and so far we haven’t been able to do that. Intallation was very difficult and there was a gap because it wasn’t wide enough and the lock doesn’t work, we had to use duct tape to keep the latch from closing! The return policy doesn’t fix the huge hole in the wall we had to make to put this in. I hope that the dogs will eventually get used to this.

Very good quality and once installed, it works great. The only thing that I am disappointed with is the installation manual was not as clear as it could be (and I am an experienced home and structural DIY-er). Also, while I like the fact that the sealant was included in the kit, I believe that minor design changes could be implemented to minimize the need for such sealant.

This thing is a severe pain in the butt to install, whoever decided it was a good idea to design a door that does not install into a rectangular hole deserves a swift kick in the shin. I thought trimming the siding back was going to be the hard part, wrong! This thing requires a lot of cursing to get it installed right with the hinges and lock mechanism sticking outside the rough rectangle. A small bit of thinking on the instalability of this door would have made it a great product. I'm not pleased with the overlap of the inside and outside aluminum panels, I think I'll have to do something to close the gaps to ensure they don't hurt my dogs. My doors do not close fully when used, they are always slightly ajar. I hope as the seals beak-in this rectifies itself. The lock mechanism is a joke, might as well have left it off the design. This door makes me want to design dog doors for a living, $500 is a bit rich for what I received. Aluminum inside and out means no thermal break, bad design for an all-weather door.On the plus side my puppy plowed right through it no problem. My more gentle dog has not gotten the hang of it right away.

A little pricy for what you get. looks good and works well. Our dog figured it out minutes after installing. The install was easy enough. But i dont believe its not gonna be drafty.. only time will tell.Update: door frame gets cold in winter and the dog got a sore on his nose from pushing it from the outside coming in. Just like putting your tongue on a flag pole.