Patio Doors Houston

Standard two-panel sliding. One fixed panel, one sliding panel. 6 foot to 8 foot wide openings. The budget and default choice. Andersen Perma-Shield, Pella 250 Series, Milgard Tuscany.

Three-panel sliding. One fixed panel, two sliding panels that stack on the fixed side. 9 foot to 12 foot wide openings. Doubles the open area vs standard. Andersen 100 Series Big Door, Pella Lifestyle.

Multi-slide pocket system. 4, 6, or 8 panels that slide and stack into a pocket cavity in the wall. Opens the entire wall. 12 foot to 24 foot wide openings. LaCantina, NanaWall, Western Window Systems. The premium indoor-outdoor living solution.

Lift-and-slide. German-engineered hardware lifts large heavy panels off the track when opening, lowers and seals when closed. Used for very large single panels (8 foot to 12 foot wide individual panels) where standard rollers cannot carry the weight.

Patio doors are typically the largest glass opening on the house. In a Cat 2 or stronger hurricane, an unrated patio door is the most likely failure point and the failure floods the interior with wind and rain. Miami-Dade certified impact-rated patio doors solve this. They cost 30 to 50 percent more than standard but qualify the home for the TWIA windstorm insurance discount. On a typical Houston home the discount alone pays for the upgrade over 8 to 12 years.

Multi-slide and pocket-stack systems require a structural header above the opening capable of carrying the roof and floor loads without the wall studs that get removed. On single-story homes with truss roofs, the existing header often supports a retrofit with minor modification. On two-story homes or load-bearing walls, a structural engineer designs a new header (steel beam or engineered LVL) and the install becomes a 1 to 2 week project. We handle the engineering coordination, permitting, and structural carpentry as part of the project.