I have moved into the 3rd storey of an apartment building that doesn't have any flyscreens. Unfortunately, with the vast amount of rain we've experienced over the last few months (and are likely to continue to experience) we've had to leave all the windows open in an attempt to reduce humidity. Besides which, getting airflow in general is a good thing.
The (huge) problem is that we are getting (huge) bugs coming into the house. Flies and mosquitoes we can (sorta) handle, but not crickets that chirp all night and are difficult to locate, white-tail spiders that aren't great pets for little kids, and those giant roaches that seem to love Sydney housing.
I want to somehow retrofit flyscreens to the outside of the windows, but unfortunately the windows are not accessible from the outside due to the height and the fact that there isn't flat ground directly below them. Also, I'm looking for a "good enough" solution, not a perfect solution which may be a professional with an Elevated Work Platform fitting fixed flyscreens to the outside of all windows.
The windows are aluminium sliding windows. Here is a picture of one of them closed:
And open:
They don't open all the way for safety reasons due to height.
My idea is relatively simple: I glue an amount of flyscreen to the outside of the window sills that is wide enough to lay flat when the window is opened. When the window is closed, the flyscreen simply folds outwards. Here is a terrible drawing of my idea, with the flyscreen depicted in red, viewed from above:
I know that the flyscreen won't be perfectly sealed at the top and bottom of the window, but if it is taught enough then when it lays flat it should prevent most of the larger bugs from getting through, as I assume they are not smart enough to hit something and try to "find a way" to get in. And if they do, well I should still be dealing with vastly fewer bugs compared to the at least one big bug per day drama that we're currently experiencing.
Will this idea work? Has anyone done something similar? Are there better ideas than the one I have, that won't break the bank and can be installed by a DIYer?
