Posted by admin on Sunday, 30 August 2009
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For do it yourselfers, dealing with the dangerous torsion springs of a rool-up garage door may not seem terribly difficult. However, getting a hold of the parts that are required for this repair job may be your hardest task.
There is definitely something to be said for self-sufficiency, but your wish to do the work by yourself may be thwarted by the commercial system in garage doors that doesn't want to take your money for the individual parts. They are usually only entrusted to installation companies.
The distributors and manufactueres of garage door opener torsion springs think that it is more advantageous for them to not retail their product directly to consumers. They can charge higher prices by restricting sales and not selling to end users, and although restraint-of-trade schemes are illegal in the United States, it's very hard to successfully overcome the situation.
In a lot of jurisdictions in the country, in fact, garage door repair is actually a licensed trade, which can lead to monopolistic situations and manipulation of the market.
Most torsion springs last about 10,000 lifts, and if you open and shut your door four times a day (twice for leaving, twice for coming home), it should last you about seven years, maximum. Each time the door opens, the tempered steel of the spring undergoes huge forces, and this can fatigue the steel, eventually leading to a horrific breakage or crack.
So you can expect to have the door repaired several times over the life of your home. It may seem economical, then, to simply to it yourself. But getting a hold on the parts necessary to do so is a huge headache.
Posted by admin on Sunday, 30 August 2009
Tags: Garage Door, Garage Door Opener, Garage Door Repair, Garage Door Replacement, Garage Door Installation, Garage Door Service, Garage Doors, Garage Door Services
Most people who live in a place with a variable climate have their homes insulated- except for their garages. Garages are usually the largest un-insulated spaces in the home, and they can use up a lot of energy in heating and air conditioning, especially if they share a wall with the main part of the house. Insulating this space saves energy, prevents loss of heat through the garage door, and ends up saving a lot of money.
Garage door insulation installation kits are usually offered at home improvement stores, and they are not very expensive. Definitely worth the effort and time, especially if the garage is used as a workspace or is otherwise inhabited.
The insulation methods vary, but achieve the same end result. There are some with foils that are reflective, containing two thick layers of super heavy duty polyethylene foam in between two thinner sheets of aluminum or other metalloid foil. These usually come out to about a fourth of an inch, sometimes a little more.
Other varieties of insulation are polystryene and various other foils, and some are easier to mount than others. Most of them can be installed by a professional garage door service person at fairly low cost.
Posted by admin on Saturday, 29 August 2009
Tags: Garage Door, Garage Doors
Although many variations exist, the two basic types of garage doors are the tilt-up variety and the sectional roll-up kind. The sectional roll-up door has several advantages over the tilt up, which make up for the fact that they are slightly more expensive.
The sectional roll-up garage door has four (sometimes five) separate sections that are connected by hinges that lift together to fit nicely in the ceiling space of your garge, without having to make clearance space in all directions around it. You can lift the door with a car parked directly in front of it, or you can put a basketball hoop right in the middle of your driveway without interfering with the garage door's opening, making it more suited to the automatic door openers. They also are more weather proof than tilt-up doors. And a roll-up can be outfitted with windows just as easily as a tilt-up garage door.
The tilt-up doors fare pretty well in temperate climates, but when its cold, ice and snow can built up in front of the door, making it impossible to open. Tilt-up doors also tend to be noisier than their rolling counterparts, though it varies.
So all in all, if you're on a tight budget, stay with a once-piece, otherwise, the rolling garage door is your best choice.
Posted by admin on Saturday, 29 August 2009
Tags: Garage Door, Garage Door Opener, Garage Door Repair, Garage Door Replacement, Garage Door Installation, Garage Door Service, Garage Doors, Garage Door Openers, Garage Door Services
We all know that there are two main methods of retracting a garage door- sectional roll up, and the simpler tilt-lift method. However, what most people don't know is that, with some exceptions, there are also only two main types of springs for those oh-so-popular roll-up garage doors.
Torsion springs are attached to a metal shaft that runs along the top of the garage door frame. The shaft itself doesn't move, and the springs are connected on one end to the center door frame plate. They then extend all along the length of the shaft, twisting as the door closes. The tension created along the cables attached to the lowest panel and the spring creates the tension necessary to lift and roll the garage door.
Side-mounted springs are longer and heavier, and they are connected on each side of the top of the garage door track. They use pulleys to create the tension to lift the door. Spare parts for this type of garage door opener system are easier to obtain than torsion spring parts, and repairing them is much more difficult and dangerous.
Knowing which type of springs you have on your garage makes obtaining garage door repair services easier.
Posted by admin on Monday, 24 August 2009
Tags: Garage Door, Garage Door Opener, Garage Door Service, Garage Doors, Garage Door Openers, Garage Door Services
When consulted, consumer experts have produced several suggestions for the best choices in garage door openers:
Noise: The cheapest and most reliable openers are chain-drive, but they are also the noisiest. If you want a quieter model, you should go for a screw-drive opener since they have the fewest moving parts, even if they are a bit more expensive. The absolute quietest garage door openers are the belt-drive units, but you have to pay for the golden silence.
Strength: all you need to lift heavy doors is a horsepower motor, and these motors are unlikely to burn out. If you have unusual or heavy-duty needs, you may want to go one step up for horsepower. Although other strengths of garage door opener are available, they are hard to get a hold of, and mostly unnecessary.
Control panel: some units have just a button, like a doorbell, to open and close the door. Most these days come with a remote or two as well. Other systems have a much more complex digital control panel that allows you to program in options, and lock down the garage when you need to.
While most openers these days come equipped with rolling-code security, you need to double-check, otherwise code-grabbers can simply use a universal opener to open your garage door.
