Garage door repair in Ajax

A town that started as a shell plant

Defence Industries Limited opened its Pickering Works on 3,000 acres of farmland in 1941. About 9,000 people worked there, 7,000 of them women, and by the end of the war they had filled more than 40 million shells, detonators, mines and caps. The housing put up for them was meant to come down afterwards. The workers petitioned to buy it instead, permanent foundations went under it, and the town took its name from HMS Ajax and became a municipality in 1955, laid out by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation as a planned industrial town.

Those streets between the 401 and the lake are the oldest housing in Ajax. The 2021 Census counts 2,765 dwellings in the town built in 1960 or before. A garage on one of them is a later addition or a detached building at the back of the lot, and that is the first thing to put on the form. A detached garage on an unheated slab and an attached one under a bedroom take different doors, and a single door on a narrow drive limits which openers fit in the space above it.

Westney Heights, and the north side of the 401

Ajax has 39,485 occupied dwellings. 8,530 of them went up between 1981 and 1990, the decade Westney Heights was built north of the 401 through the early-1980s recession. A house from that decade is likely on its second opener, and the door itself has reached the age where the bottom section and the rollers decide whether it deserves another set of parts or a replacement.

Then the town grew north again. 10,610 dwellings, 27 per cent of everything in Ajax, were built between 2001 and 2010 on the streets around Audley Road and Taunton Road. The opener on a 2005 house is the builder's, and it is the part that gives out first. A belt drive is quieter under a bedroom than the chain it replaces, and battery backup keeps the door working through the outage that follows an ice storm. The choices are on the garage door openers page.

What Protech does in Ajax

Openers come first here because that is what Ajax asks for. Protech installs and replaces LiftMaster, Chamberlain and Genie openers and repairs the ones that hum without moving or stop partway, through garage door opener repair. New overhead doors from Garaga, Amarr and Stanley, single and double, insulated or not, can be drawn on your own house with Design Your Door before anyone visits. Repairs cover springs, cables, rollers, a door that has left its track and the safety sensors, through garage door repair. Ajax kept its industry after the plant closed. By 1969 Volkswagen Canada, DuPont and AEG Bayly Engineering were among the employers, and the industrial land along the 401 still runs commercial overhead doors, which Protech services and replaces along with commercial openers.

Getting a van to Ajax

Bonhill Road in Mississauga to the centre of Ajax is about 60 km by road, and 52 of them are on the 401 across the top of Toronto. There is no Ajax premises. Ajax is the far end of the Mississauga run, so a same-day call here is a longer window than a call in Mississauga, and the window depends on what the 401 is doing at the hour the van leaves. Repairs are booked same day. Give the street, whether the garage is attached, and what the door is doing, and the reply will say when a van can be at the door.

Permits in Ajax

The Town of Ajax publishes a permit guide called "Carports, garages & sheds" and takes applications through its online portal at eapply.ajax.ca or by email to buildingpermits@ajax.ca. A door replaced in its own opening is not a new structure. A new detached garage is, and widening an opening to fit a double door changes the structure above it, so that is a question for the Town before the work, not after.

Repair or replace, and what it costs

The bill in Ajax depends on which of the three towns you are in. A spring on a detached single behind a 1950s house is a small job on a door that may be worth keeping for years. A door on a 1985 Westney Heights house that needs a spring, both cables and new rollers in the same visit is close to the price of a plain replacement, and the replacement comes with new hardware. A 2005 double door north of Taunton is usually a keeper, and the money goes into the opener. Ask for the repair figure and the replacement figure together. The full comparison is on garage door replacement.

Send the form

Send the form with the street, the door type and what it is doing, or email info@protechgarage.ca, and the Mississauga branch will reply with a time.