Garage door guides

Six guides so far, all written for a door that has to work through an Ontario winter rather than for a showroom floor. They answer the questions that come up before anybody books anything: what size door the opening in your wall will actually take, whether an insulated door is worth what it costs on this particular garage, which of the seals on a door is the one letting the weather in, how long the springs that lift it can be expected to last, what to do the day a cable lets go, and whether a door that has failed is worth repairing at all.

Standard garage door sizes is the one to read first, because the size is the thing every other decision hangs off. It covers what a single and a double actually measure, why the sizes a distributor stocks are not the sizes a factory can build, and the three clearances that decide whether a door fits at all: the headroom above the opening, the side room beside it, and the depth behind it. It also carries the measuring rule people most often get wrong, which is to measure the opening in the wall and never the door already hanging in it.

Insulated garage doors is the one to read before ordering a replacement. It covers what the R-value printed on a door actually measures, why it cannot be compared with a U-factor, what polyurethane buys over polystyrene, and the case where the seals around the door matter more than the foam inside it. It is written against Ottawa numbers: a January that averages minus 10 and 4,434 heating degree-days in a normal year.

Garage door weather stripping is the one to read when a closed door is letting in snow, light or mice. It works through the four seals a door can have, how to tell which one you are looking at, how to measure it before buying anything, and when the daylight is telling you the door needs adjusting rather than a new seal.

How long garage door springs last is the one to read when the door has started to feel heavy, drift down from open or clank on its way up. It turns the 10,000-cycle rating on a standard spring into years at your own usage, sets out what cold, snow and road salt take off that count, and answers the question of what goes on a spring, which on Garaga's instructions is oil and never WD-40.

Garage door cable snapped is the one to read when a cable is hanging loose or the door has dropped on one side. It covers what to leave alone and why the emergency release should stay untouched while the door is open, how to tell a snapped cable from one that has slipped off its drum, and what the DASMA cable standard says about how many cycles a cable is built for. It also counts the freezing-rain days that put ice under an Ottawa door.

Repair or replace your garage door is the one to read when something has broken and the door is getting old. It sorts the faults that are parts from the ones that mean a new door, carries Garaga's figure for what one section costs against a whole door, and gives the life of a door by construction.

None of them quotes a price, because a price on a garage door comes from a measurement of the opening rather than from a page. For the work itself, every service is on the services page, every place we cover is on the service areas page, and the branch that covers your address is on the contact page.