Your garage door is an important feature of your home. Mainly of course because it keeps your belongings safe and gives you somewhere to keep your vehicles safe and secure. But especially because it forms a part of your home’s kerb appeal. It’s therefore slightly surprising that this seems to be a section of the home is often taken for granted; that is until a potential fault occurs. A broken garage door can leave your property insecure, as well as posing a health and safety risk so it really needs to be rectified as soon as it can be. Garage doors need specialist knowledge and equipment to repair and as a result, you’ll often need to consult a professional. You will need to trust your repair company to do help you to make the appropriate recommendations.
Chances are, you will at some point need to ask yourself, am I in a position where I need to repair, or replace my garage door? This blog post is written with that in mind to help you to make an informed decision.
Garage Door Repair So, how do you know if it’s simply just a case of getting your door repaired rather than a full-on replacement? Here are a number of issues that are common for garage door owners and that are repairable if a professional is bought in. Here we look at a few of them now.
The door suddenly stops working:You may think that if you wake up one morning and your garage door does not appear to be working, that it is completely broken and you’ll have to brace yourself for a complete replacement. Interestingly, sudden breakdowns are usually easier to fix. That’s because the problem is frequently isolated. Because it is sudden, you haven’t been mis-using your door for years, causing significant damage.
Firstly, always check the remote batteries before you make any major assumptions. Sometimes in the stress of an early morning commute with a non-functioning garage door, even the most careful homeowner can forget to check the batteries and then feel the unnecessary humiliation of knowing that the only thing wrong was a couple of dead AAAs.
However, if you are confident that you don’t just need a new set of batteries, be sure to call a professional. A professional service enables someone with a lot of experience who will be able to look at the problem and quickly diagnose the issue, saving you plenty of time. Moreover, while you may be able to save money in the short term by taking a day off and attempting to fix the problem yourself, the amount of energy and time lost as you search out the issue will swiftly surpass the cost of quality service.
The door appears heavier: As we have previously, springs are put in place within your garage lift mechanism in order to help lift the door. Due to the fact that the doors are so heavy, the lift motor will entail far more significant wear and tear if it had to lift the full weight of the door every time you opened it. Furthermore, in order to make sure that you can open your door even if you lose power in your home, springs permit you to lift the door by hand when the motor is disengaged.
A single panel is damaged: If you do have physical damage to your door, regardless of the cause, you want to get it repaired quickly if you want the repair to be cost-effective.
The key is to repair a damaged panel when the damage is limited to just that single panel. Most factory manufactured doors and also supply individual panels to service dealers, so swapping out a panel is pretty painless.
However, like a rusty spot on your car, if you ignore a minor issue for long enough, it will most likely spread and completely change the equation for repair costs. Once you are replacing more than a few panels, it isn’t any cheaper than replacing the entire door.
So if you do happen to dent your door backing out of your driveway or because your child perhaps damages the door with their bike, be sure that you address the issue straight away if you want to avoid a total replacement.
Your garage door appears to be sagging: When your door only closes halfway, you need to question, does it appear as one side is lower than the other? This is a clear sign of an imbalanced garage door. While it may just look unusual, it is also a sign that your door is putting increased wear and tear on the lifting mechanism. Consider the importance of having balanced tires for your car. If one tire is more worn than the rest, your car won’t work as it should. Moreover, various parts of your car will bear the brunt of that increased wear more than others. That’s why it’s so important to rotate your tyres regularly.
The same is true for garage doors. If one side of your door is sagging, it is likely that only one spring has started to wear. That indicates that one side of your door is heavier than the other, putting uneven stress on your lift motor.
Thankfully, rebalancing your door is a simple fix and requires a similar procedure to replacing your springs. By replacing both springs and then rehanging your door, a service person will restore the important balance of your door and ensure that it will wear evenly moving forward.
Garage door replacement Now that we’ve looked into some of the most common and reasonably affordable repairs, let’s take a look at some the issues that commonly lead to homeowners replacing their whole garage door.
Your garage door hasn’t worked properly for a while: While a seemingly sudden issue is often swiftly repaired, a consistent issue that has gone unaddressed for months or years will likely require a total replacement. The problem is that garage doors have a number of weighty and powerful moving parts. If the door is working as it is intended, it can open and close hundreds and hundreds of times with no issues.
However, if there is even a minor issue in the lifting mechanism that repeatedly impacts the movement of the door, you will soon find that the damage caused over those hundreds of lifts cannot be fixed.
Your garage door is significantly damaged: At a point, the cost of getting your door repaired in portions is going to end up costing more than replacing the whole thing. This has become increasingly the case as the costs of garage door fabrication have been lowered. Like so many things in life, replacement parts just don’t make as much sense in many instances as a total overhaul.
This is particularly true if your door has experienced damage by inclement weather. While an errant hockey puck usually causes isolated damage, a fallen tree limb is likely to spread damage across a series of separate door panels.
Do consider, if you have experienced damage, you want to fix it quickly as possible, as a damaged door will also be unbalanced and in turn, trigger further issues on the tracking mechanism and motor. A new door will still be more affordable than an entirely new door system.
Old-garage-door While a simple lick of paint can go miles in improving the appearance of your garage door, the truth is that door design has come a long way in the years since garages were initially installed within homes. Not only are newer doors more in line with current fashion trends, but they are also better sized for today’s cars. A new, contemporary door is a great way to get an immediate boost on the value of your home.
Furthermore, brand new doors come with more improved security features, helping to improve the way you protect your home and loved ones. While older doors are easy to break into, whether through breaking the lift mechanism or even using a universal garage door remote, new doors come with many unnecessary security features, which will go a long way in deterring the threat of burglary.
If you’re looking for a professional, reliable and high-quality garage door repair service that offers garage doors repairs, maintenance or installation, call Kay Garage Doors at 01786 474 709 | 08000 430 397. Visit us at Unit 1, Phoenix Estate Springbank Road Stirling, FK7 7SG.
