OUR EVALUATION OF THE PELLA 150 PATIO DOOR

EMERGENCY CALL TO REPLACE SMASHED PATIO DOOR

Eric Martindale - Nov 30th, 2022

We got an emergency call from a customer in the Township of Washington that had the glass smashed on a patio door. The double-pane of the fixed panel were smashed, both pieces of glass. This means there was nothing to secure the house except a piece of cardboard that the customer put there. It was cold too, frosty every morning. The broken glass was making the whole house cold inside.

The customer called many contractors, and nobody would accommodate their schedule for an immediate install. Some were saying they’d take 3 or 4 days just to come and give a quote. Everyone was saying “it’s an off-size, it has to be special ordered”.

I came out same day and took a look. I immediately saw that it was a 5-foot-wide patio door. The most common size is 6-foot. I knew that Lowes stocks a 5-foot patio door, the Pella 150. It’s a super-budget all-vinyl unit, despite the Pella name. It comes only one way, as “new construction”, meaning it has a nailing flange. Also, from the outside the Left side is operating, and the Right side is fixed. The Pella 150 comes in both 5-foot and 6-footers. Just by pure chance, the customer needed one with the Left side operating.  

I’m not a huge fan of the Pella 150 patio door. It’s a budget door, and some of the features are sub-standard. For instance, there’s no metal reinforcements in the vinyl for rigidity and added structural strength. It’s tough for the installer to determine a true vertical level, because the edges tend to be wavy. However, the lack of any metal improves (lowers) the U-factor score. The Pella 150 rolls reasonably well, and much better than the much-venerated Andersen 400. 

I absolutely despise the Andersen 400 door. It was great when it came out in 1980, but it’s pure garbage compared to almost every other patio door being sold today. I will write a future article about it. The primary and often deciding selling point for the Andersen 400 is that some customers think white vinyl patio doors are “too white”, and they want the softer off-white standard paint color that Andersen offers. Andersen’s off-white goes well with the light beige and file-folder color wall paints that were in style 10 – 20 years ago. However, for every customer who thinks this way about Andersen’s white, there’s 4 or 5 other customers who simply love the sharp whiteness of white vinyl patio doors. That sharp white is their strong preference, and it’s maintenance-free. Sharp white is in style, for two reasons. It is considered clean and “germ-free” in this age of Coronaphobia, and it contrasts well with medium gray walls that are in style now. Fans of sharp white will also choose Behr’s Interior “Super-White” in Semigloss for paint. This is the whitest white paint on the market, and it’s used for interior trim. Behr’s ceiling paint is also very white compared to competitors. Every flip house is painted the exact shade of grey, with super-white trim. The Pella 150 is a very white vinyl. 

The Pella 150 has a better latch mechanism than some doors that are three times the cost. The entire door comes fully assembled, which is a big plus for the contractor. For people on a budget, the $428 material cost is great. The screen is about another $170, by the way. Most importantly, this was the only 5-footer in stock anywhere, and the situation was an emergency. I told them I’ll order it today, I’ll have it delivered in two days, and in three days I’ll be here with a worker to get it done. Sold !!!

When we started the demolition, we saw that the old patio door was just sitting in the opening, secured by nothing. It had an exterior “new construction” nailing flange that is supposed to take dozens of roofing nails. There wasn’t one nail or screw holding this door in place. Ridiculous. The inside molding was positioning the door in the opening, but really not securing it. There were no trim boards on the outside to secure it either, just a half-inch of foam and some tacky aluminum coil. This was the most poorly installed patio door I have ever seen in 14 years of being in business. It’s quite possible that the installation factored into the glass breaking.

Here’s the finished door, completed on time. We installed new PVC boards around the entire opening, to replace the worn and oxidized aluminum coil that was there before. It’s fresh and sharp, and caulked well. We always recommend PVC boards instead of aluminum coil. 

I once installed EIGHT 6-foot Pella 150 patio doors for a customer in Mahwah, NJ. Who has eight patio doors? Someone with a “pool house”, that’s who. 

IS THE PELLA 150 REVERSIBLE?

The salesman at Lowes says “The Pella 150 unit is easily reversible for quick customer installation”. This is total nonsense. We did it once for another customer, and we’ll never do it again. The door has to be completely disassembled and then re-fabricated. This involves the very difficult task of taking the wheels “off”, turning the glass upside down, and “restoring” the wheels. There’s two key parts where the wheels mount that they say must be carefully “held with locking pliers”, which is almost impossible. If the pliers lose the grip while you are turning it upside down, the parts disappear into the hollow vinyl framing, and it’s extremely difficult to rescue them. Been there, done that. Each part took a good hour to rescue.

We struggled with reversing that Pella 150 for a good five hours, and amazingly we got it done. We’re just laughing at their marketing concept that a customer can easily do this. Hahahaha. Reversing a Pella 150 takes far more time, and is far more difficult, than installing the Pella 150. Not even close. Don’t expect the salesman at Lowes to know this. Unless they are a retired contractor, most have no clue what’s happening on the jobsites. This is Pella’s idea of marketing a budget product, and if the customer or the contractor is struggling at the jobsite, they couldn’t don’t care less. It’s hurting the Pella brand name, for sure. Note also that their instructions to reverse the patio door are almost useless. The pictures are deficient, and the print is way too small to read, and not crisp. Some very important points are buried in the text, and they don’t stand out. They assume that people actually read the entire instructions, and understand which points are super important. 

Another issue with the Pella 150 is that it doesn’t come standard with a key lock. Yes, there’s a Pella lock that can be special-ordered, but it’s not easy to drill it out and insert the lock mechanism. My strong recommendation is that if the customer wants the key lock, it’s best to hire a locksmith to do install it.

WHY PATIO DOORS ARE OFTEN ORDERED WRONG

There’s another common problem with ordering a patio door. The salesman at the retail store, or the contractor visiting your home, will ask if you want it XO or OX. This is what decides if the left or right panel is the stationary panel. There are several ways that people screw this up.  

1. First, the X and the O don’t stand for anything logical. “O” stands for “Operating” or “Opening”, right? No, that would make perfect sense, and that’s what everyone thinks. Unfortunately, that would be wrong. Decades ago, a really brain-dead architect somewhere decided that the “O” panel is stationary, and the “X” panel is opening/operating. This has become the industry standard. The salesman selling the door will often make this mistake, either because they don’t know what the letters stand for, or they forgot. After the door is delivered wrong, the customer goes back to the salesman, and if he’s honest, he might say “oh, oh, yeah yeah, they told me that in training, but it just slipped my mind”. The problem is the customer authorized the order, and it then becomes a battle with the store over who eats the problem.
   


2. Second, people are typically viewing the patio door from the inside, most often from the dining room table right next to the patio door. That’s what’s in people’s minds. Very often, people are walking around the house with the salesman looking at all the windows and the patio door from the inside of the house, so the “inside” perspective is what’s on everyone’s minds 99% of the time. But if you look carefully at the below picture, it says “Exterior View”. You have to reverse the XO / OX in your mind. The industry standard of looking at the patio door from the outside is simply terrible, which brings us to the third problem.
   


3. Okna, which is my preferred patio door brand, has decided to buck the industry standard, and when you order from OKNA, you have to indicate XO or OX from the inside. This becomes an additional problem if the customer is going back and forth over which brand to buy.


4. A similar situation happens with sliding and casement windows. Some window manufacturers like Okna look at the windows from the inside, and some look at them from the outside.