Garage door repair, installation and openers in North York

The bungalow, and the house that replaced it

North York grew from 85,897 people in 1951 to 269,959 in 1961. Willowdale is where Torontonians first used the phrase "monster homes": from the 1990s, on a large scale, two-storey replacement houses went up on lots that had held the smaller postwar houses. The rebuilt house has a double garage under a bedroom, and a door hung on a 1995 rebuild is about thirty years old, on an opener that was the builder's or the first replacement. Across the Willowdale, York Centre and Don Valley North ridings the 2021 Census counts 136,075 occupied dwellings, 21,500 built in 1960 or before and 44,825 between 1961 and 1980, so the postwar house is still the most common one on those streets even where it is no longer the most visible one.

A rebuild sends two kinds of call. The first is an opener that has stopped, strains or has started to grind under the bedroom, and Protech replaces it with a belt-drive LiftMaster, Chamberlain or Genie with battery backup, through garage door openers. The second is a new door, because the one on a 1995 rebuild was the builder's choice, and a Garaga, Amarr or Stanley insulated door in a style that suits a stone front is the upgrade to consider. Design Your Door puts it on a photograph of the house.

Don Mills, and the bungalows that are still bungalows

E. P. Taylor's Don Mills was announced on 11 March 1953 and built as Canada's first planned postwar community, on square lots with long street frontages and with industry planned in so it would not be a bedroom suburb. A Don Mills garage door that has never been replaced would be more than seventy years old. On a sound steel replacement from a later decade, a spring, a cable set and new rollers through garage door repair keep a sound steel door running for years, and the first-generation opener still on some of them is a replacement rather than a repair.

Yonge Street, and the doors under the towers

In the Willowdale riding alone, 22,655 of 50,550 dwellings were built between 2001 and 2021, and across the three ridings 72,135 dwellings, 53 per cent, are apartments in buildings of five or more storeys. Those residents have no garage door of their own. The building has one, on the parking garage, used by every car in the building every day on a commercial opener, and the call comes from the property manager. That is commercial garage door work on a commercial opener, and a failed one strands every car in the building.

Downsview

William de Havilland bought 70 acres at Downsview in 1929 to build aircraft, the RCAF built its supply depot there in 1954, and the base closed in 1994 and was sold to Bombardier Aerospace. Redevelopment of the complex began in 2011 and Humber River Hospital opened at Wilson Avenue and Keele Street in 2015. The western section is still industrial, and the shops and hangars along it run overhead doors that Protech services and replaces, along with the residential doors on the streets built around the base through the 1960s.

Getting a van to North York

Bonhill Road to central North York is about 25 km by road, 17 of them on the 401, coming off at Allen Road. It is the shortest run on this side of the city and it is still not a short drive: the 401 through North York carries more than 400,000 vehicles a day, the busiest stretch of freeway in North America. Protech has no North York premises and no Toronto address; the work is sent from Mississauga. Repairs are booked same day, and the window quoted depends on the 401 at the hour. Say the street and what the door is doing.

Permits in Toronto

The double garage on a Willowdale rebuild was permitted with the house. Changing its door later is not: the City of Toronto's page "When Do I Need a Building Permit?" exempts a door replaced in an existing opening in a detached, semi-detached or row house with one dwelling unit, as long as the opening keeps its size and location and its structural support is untouched. A new detached garage over 10 square metres needs a permit. So does widening a bungalow single into a double.

Garage doors in North York

Protech supplies and installs Garaga, Amarr and Stanley garage doors in North York, and on a North York rebuild the new door has to agree with the slope of the driveway before it agrees with anything else. Toronto's zoning by-law 569-2013 requires the lowest point of a vehicle entrance in the main wall of a detached or semi-detached house, or of a townhouse with its own driveway, to sit higher than the centreline of the driveway where it meets the front lot line at the street. A house built now cannot put its garage at the foot of a driveway that runs down from the road.

Toronto Water calls that a reverse slope driveway, one sloping down from the street to a below-grade garage, and building one today takes a minor variance or a zoning amendment. Houses built with one before the rule still have it. On those garages the door stands at the low point of the driveway, beside the drain, so the bottom seal and the retainer that holds it matter more than the panel design, and a seal that has cracked or flattened should be replaced before winter. The weather stripping guide covers the seal types.

Repair or replace, and what it costs

In North York the split is by house. On a 1990s rebuild the opener is the usual bill and the door is a choice, upgrade or keep. On a Don Mills bungalow with a sound steel door, the parts are cheap against the door and a repair wins; on the same bungalow with a wood door that has rotted at the bottom rail, a spring is money against a door that is leaving. Ask for the repair figure and the replacement figure together. Garage door replacement sets out what moves them.

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.