In this blog entry, the professional Charleston garage door installation team here at A1 Garage Door Charleston will detail the three most common garage door issues that indicate that it is time to replace your garage door.
What are the main garage issues that cause people to purchase a new garage door?
Garage Safety Problems
- Broken Garage Door Springs – Overhead garage doors either have extension springs on either side of the garage door or torsion springs in the center top of the garage door header. Overhead garage door springs undergo huge pressure and easily break under regular use. Signs of worn garage doors include popping, grinding, or noisy sounds; uneven or rough opening and cloning which indicates uneven tension or spring failure; slow or fast lifting or opening; or garage doors crashing down. Extension springs gave a general lifespan of 10,000 cycles, or 5 years of time, while garage torsion springs usually last 30,000 cycles or 10 years of time.
- Snapped Cables – If your garage cables are frayed, broken, or snapped, it makes your garage very dangerous. The door could become inoperative or potentially come crashing down, causing serious damage to anyone nearby or any cars underneath the garage door.
- Off-Track Doors – It’s possible that overhead garage doors can get knocked off track or can simply get off-track from regular use and little maintenance. Garage doors require a range of moving parts to balance it and keep it smoothly moving through garage tracks. Broken rollers, bent tracks, or accumulated rust or gunk can cause garage doors to come off of their tracks.
- Rust – Rust causes damage to garage doors, garage door frames, garage door panels, or other necessary components for a garage door’s structural integrity. The corrosion of rust weakens the metallic materials, potentially causing damage, cracking, or even dangerous garage collapse.
- Falling Components – If your garage components keep falling off, it’s definitely time to have them replaced or at the very least checked out by a licensed and expert garage professional.
Garage Structural Damage
- Panel Damage – Panels can experience large cracks, dents, or damage that not only look bad but compromise the garage odor’s structural integrity. They can be caused by backing into your garage door, or by storm damage. This impacts garage functionality, and interferes with garage moving parts, making them open and close inconsistently. Damage also causes a big security risk, leaving your home potentially vulnerable to entrance from humans or even animals.
Energy Efficiency Issues
- Increased Energy Bills – If you notice that your energy bills are suddenly very high, or if your home temperature is affected by the proximity of a leaky attached garage, you might want to consider upgrading your poorly-insulated old garage door to a newer model that provides better insulation from superior materials and literal insulation-based construction. Additionally over time the seals around old garage doors can get worn out, allowing the weather to flow through your garage disrupting your ideal comfortable room temperatures.