Closure

Today's story of despair and repair involves our front storm door. The door stopper broke sometime during the winter and I bought a new one and installed it. But it never worked right.

No matter how often I adjusted the vacuum screw it still slammed loudly just before closing. We put up with it for a while and then it developed another tic. When we closed the front door after leaving the house, the storm door wouldn’t close all the way.

I visited the local shop where I bought the stopper. The boss insisted the door was supposed to slam when closing and furthermore suggested that it was normal for the storm door not to close all the way if the front door also was closed. He said something about air pressure preventing the door from closing all the way. Huh?

Well, neither my wife nor I bought that story and finally I just removed the door stopper and took it back. This time a more reasonable person heard our story and agreed to send someone to look at it. We left the stopper with him and went home.

This afternoon a nice young man from the shop came by, made a slight adjustment and reinstalled the stopper. It closed nicely with the front door open but he advised us that if the front door was closed the storm door would not shut completely.

Why not, asked my wife. He gave us the same story about air pressure preventing complete closure. So she closed the front door and let the storm door close. It closed perfectly. Not supposed to happen, said the young technician. She did it again. Same result, perfect closure. She did it a third time and got the same excellent result.

We were satisfied, the young man was confused. He went off shaking his head, insisting the stopper wasn't supposed to work like that.

We thanked him, anyway, and wished him well.